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Sophie Parks
Nebulary
It wasn’t love, our feet scratching on crumbling streets and scuffing over manhole covers rusted brown with acid rain. We roller skated down sloping ramps, relishing in the steady click, click, click of the wheels each time we hit a new square in the sidewalk.
“Count the stars,” you’d say, pointing into the only sky we’ve ever known, so obscured by streetlights and neon signs that searching for even the concept of a star is unfathomable.
But we were children then, and we could pretend that there were stars.
It wasn’t love, picking pamphlets instead of flowers and smiling at strangers on street corners who wouldn’t smile back. They say “take only pictures, leave only footprints” but asphalt doesn’t record our steps and the pictures cost money we don’t have.
The sun comes up over skyscrapers and daylight falls in the city in a way that makes you almost believe you could be somewhere.
“Count the stars,” you said, and I did.
And here we are.
“Look,” you say, we’re walking again, as we pass a fountain that isn’t a stream, water cycling through metal pipes into a concrete basin, turning, turning, trapped in a never-ending loop where people throw pennies to make wishes in the water that never changes. I’ve seen this fountain before, every time we’ve come here together, but you’re so enthralled by the patterns that I can’t bring myself to look away.
From the fountain, of course.
Once upon a time, I threw a quarter into the top bowl and the world said I could have anything I wanted.
After six months, I stopped waiting.
After three years, I don’t toss coins into fountains because my parents say that’s a waste of money.
I remember, though, the feeling of potential.
Your hands move when you talk, mesmerizing gestures I put in my pockets and analyze before bed. Hands, running through your hair, separating strands just so you can twist them deftly back together. Hands dipping into the water, splashing me, sparkling, laughing, as if we could be new again.
Wind rustles in the background and it might be leaves, I think we could pretend the leaves if we wanted to—
But this isn’t a forest. Together, we crunch through the Styrofoam cups and discarded takeout boxes, finding our way into the steel scaffolding branches of trees long forgotten by their creators. It’s raining now, and the plywood canopy above does little to protect us from the cold.
“Your watch is broken.”
My imaginary forest, shattered by the sound of your voice, comes together in an instant when your hand catches my wrist, turning it to look closer. It’s been weeks, I haven’t fixed it, there are so many clocks in this city and every goddamn street corner tells me how much time I’m wasting. It’s almost comforting, never knowing where I’ve gone wrong when I’m alone. On my left wrist, it’s always 2:37pm.
I tell you this and you nod solemnly, glancing at the flashing display across the street and confirming that it is, indeed, 2:37 and thus I happen to be correct for this small moment of the day.
Lucky me.
“The sun could tell us the time, if we knew how,” you say, and it’s my turn to nod.
“We could try,” I say. I like to think, maybe, if you could have seen the forest, you would have known what I was offering.
But this isn’t love. It didn’t mean anything, anyway.
We don’t know how to use the sun as a clock; the date and time are force-fed to us at each street corner with every neon sign that isn’t a star above fountains that will never be rivers—
And we run inside the moment the sky clouds over because it’s cold here in the city.
“Count the stars,” I say, breaking the silence, dropping your gaze, looking out into the rain.
And you do.
Sophie Parks is practicing putting the complexities of human existence into whimsical little boxes through her preferred art forms—dance and creative writing. Most of the time, she can be found somewhere in Michigan making up words and moving around in ways many people find unpleasant.
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