I’d like to picture him dancing amongst the locals, and I’d like to remember them as something worth remembering. Smiling folk, some with fisherman’s teeth, calling out and singing aloud as though we were in an old country, as though we were home. I’d like to picture him coming in through the old door, looming alone in that way that he carried himself. And I’d like to think those smiling folk drew the truth from him.

That the door stopped him, that the wood suddenly sprouted and grew as bamboo grows—a hundred feet tall—and the thought of the implications which would be hurled at him froze his feet in place and sweat gathered on the back of his neck and that she pushed by him and went inside. That when the door opened and that bit of light and warmth seeped through, it convinced him that he wasn’t meant for the cold loneliness of the coast that night.

That the locals stopped, confused to find him in company but that her manner and his told them all they need to know, that there was nothing to know. And that maybe she could have seen him throw with the locals and boast and drink and find that he was the right choice after all. That he was one of the few who was good. That he did good with what came his way and that he was as much a knight as any man could be in this day in age.

And I’d like to picture that he didn’t fall from the narrow path into the sea below, that he swooned and gathered his balance with his wits and that he made it to the road. That maybe her arm lifted his, and helped him there, and that she drove the mice away and laid his head down on the cot, and that, for all his gruff on life, an angel watched over him for one night and that he was both very lucky and very deserving of it all. 

That his eyes crept open and his hoarse voice whispered, “why?”
And that she smiled and closed his eyes with a wave.

I’d like to picture 
a just world with angels real 
that coddle sad souls walking 
alone on rainy coasts 
there at night.

Fragments cling to my heart’s eye. We chose the table in the middle, the only table available. There was heavy traffic, mostly aged locals, to the counter with cream and cocoa powder and stir sticks, and many looked down at the boys and smiled. A young couple who smelled as though they’d been on the road sat to my left. She rubbed his shoulders and struggled to sit down and he spent a fair bit of time staring at a screen. I sensed trouble in their future but reminded myself it was rude to assume, that maybe their tale would be a lovely one, a real romance. The morning was warmth, the people were happy, and the food drew us to the counter. I held my cup in the crook of my finger and watched Philo play with a straw and some sugar packets. You sipped coffee too, and every now and again, our eyes would meet and you would smile. I hope now that I smiled back. We might’ve seemed strange or distant to one another because we did not speak much at our little table, but we didn’t need to. It’s been growing more so, that we sit with one another and watch them and laugh and the present is so sweet it burns to pass. And the nights when we’re alone and we forgo our work to sit and talk about the things in life we must scream about, and we laugh and say nothing to one another, but I hope you know that you are my best friend in a way that sears it to my soul, and that the boys really are a light indescribable. Anyways, that morning in the cafe on the coast was lovely. You were lovely.

One day I expect to face existence alone again, and I know my spine will remain and I can exhale a shuddering breath remembering your smile and our time together, and maybe the waves will crash and I with them. It’ll be out there on those cliffs. I will dissipate to nevermore and no one will really know that I stayed for you.

The pain was blunt and his body raw. It hovered in his consciousness like a cloud, all over. There was no time to differentiate. No time to get better. The summer breezes sang through the trees above the square, their little round leaves shimmering in the sunlight. He knew the name of those trees once, when he was young and his father was teaching him of the world. He could not remember now, and there was no time. He had but a moment and he rather spend it smelling the air, hearing those leaves rattle against one another, soft, like the kiss of a girl he knew long ago. They had tore their clothes off and ran into the sea, and she smiled at him and her eyes said that they would not know each other long, but they would have that afternoon in the sea, in the sun. The water was blue. He smiled in the square, the pain dull now, far off for he had his mind.
The soldiers about him went about their business with little regard to the makings of his face. He was a Gaul, an enemy. His art was foreign and unbalanced to them. His home was poorly built of wood and the fires inside made it stink. These soldiers were a new class of human, they said, the next coming of man, and it was true, their walls were strong. Their armor shone in the light now and he had to hand it to them, they were efficient. A man’s voice called out, and one of the men next to him died quickly. 
He decided to drift off again. He smelled the air and watched the shadows dance off the wall. He remembered his feet in the moist dirt on a fall day. His memory hall was a kind place. The grass was green and friends were there. Friends were free. They ran, naked, through the fields, the wind blowing shadows across the hills.

And that is how he died, smiling at the wall, the shadows of leaves rolling in the breeze. What a nice time of year to go, he thought, though he couldn’t deny that inside his heart, he wanted another day.

A man’s voice called out, and summer vanished.

The boy crouched low to the dusty ground, looking both ways, before he shuffled up to the iron ladder and gripped it tight. The boy heaved himself onto the train.
A boy behind him grimaced. He followed slowly, with his hands in his pockets and couldn’t resist turning his head. The boy behind him looked as though he were in trouble. His voice shook. 
“Where you gonna go?”
“Judging by these tracks, someplace west of here.”
The boy crouched low on the train now.
“Hurry up, toss me up my bag and get lost, before someone sees you.”
The other boy did as he was told, and stopped back, his leather boots drawing little clouds of dust about his feet. He couldn’t help but drag one foot, and then the other. He couldn’t sit still.
“But I don’t rightly understand where-“
“Will you just go!”
The other boy sniffled then, for he was hurt. The boy on the train clenched his jaw and took a breath. He didn’t want to hurt him.
“Look, I’ll come back real soon alright?”
The other boy looked up through his crying eyes then.
“You promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
The other boy just sniffled.
“Now get out of here before someone sees ya.”
The other boy turned with his hands still in his pockets. His boots dragged in the dirt and he walked as one does when their heart is broken and nothing quite seems right.
The boy on the train whistled, and the sad little other boy turned his head.
“I’ll see you again. I’ll be back with two big guns and a name.”
“You got a name.”
“Not one I made yet.”
The other boy just watched.
The steam engine at the front of the train screamed shrill to their left. The boy on the train glanced toward the front of the train then back to the other boy.
“Take care of Ma.”
He touched his hat as the train lurched into motion. Neither boy waved. The other boy watched the train grow smaller on the horizon, hands still in his pockets, heart still in the dirt. He watched that train a long time, until it was a black speck on the horizon and then nothing at all, and then he watched awhile longer until the sun got low and the sky turned orange. When his dusty boots clambered onto the wooden floor of their cabin, his mother asked him, where you been?
“Nowhere,” he said.