May 21, 2013

141

Day One Hundred and Forty-One:  Staring Over

Unkept and strange the grass that sits is taller than your knee’s and bright blossoming green with short spouts of weeds and flowers intermingled together to post a long valley of disarray and vacancy.  A large yellow school bus sits to the left, seemingly abandonded with the old-fashioned doors sitting open.  Two school bags sits beside the school bus on the grass, barely seen by its height.  The bus is sitting on the grass since there is no road at all, it seemed to have just wanted to pass through.  A bird chirps to the left, and another on the right, a short fifteen second exchange of humming that ceases with one loud snap.  Footsteps approach, one very heavy set and another shuffling through the tall grass.  Some short coughes, and the bird from the right erupts in chirps and flies away quickly as two tall men approach the centre.

One man in a large brown coat, holding a bouqet of red flowers and smiling dazedly into the sun following the first tall man who wears only a light blue shirt and blue jeans.  Not speaking, but it seems as though the man leading the other towards the bus is growing impatient by the loud heavy footsteps and short bursts of breath every few steps.  No more birds.  No more interruptions.

The leading man picks up the first bag and stops to look at it before turning to the second man, who stares at his own bag and drops his flowers in order to pick it up.  The two men are of similar height but the second man seems to have an easier time picking his bag up, as if it held very little.  As the first man boarded the bus, his bag on the crook of his arm he ignored the man behind him who smeared a dew-y hand noisily across the side of the bus, holding his one bag gingerly in his free hand.  The noise stopped when he reached the door.

The dazed man turns to face out and swoops to pick up what seems like a bouqet arranged by a blind man:  just grass, weeds, flowers, and a small amount of dirt around the bottom.  He turns slowly, all that can be heard is the short impatient breaths from the man sitting in the dirver’s seat for the bus.  The man holding flowers boards the bus slowly, taking one deliberate step after the other, as if following his own procession to the grave.   The doors shut shortly behind him as he reaches the top step.

Lights down.


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