Flash fiction excerpt: “el Adios”

The red brick walls and pea green trim look tired and the rust on the window frames is visible from any distance. This decay is amplified by the beautiful sepia brick replacement being built to its right. As much as you want (need) the building to be there forever, and wonder from your home three hundred miles away why the wrecking ball is necessary, as you actually approach it you see the pain and as you leave you hear a faint voice saying that it’s time. Please, I can’t do this anymore.

The cafeteria looks smaller and our bodies look larger and I suppose that both are the result of a long thirty years that disappear when you see classmates and teammates that commonality and life experience have turned into brothers and sisters with kids of their own. A band plays 80s songs in the gym and we don’t dance now like we did then, but rather struggle to connect today’s faces and golf shirts to yesterday’s yearbook photos and velvet bow ties.

Behind the school our overgrown football field has turned into a parking lot for construction vehicles, with a chain link halo, that shares what’s left of the turf with the ghosts of blue jerseyed boys in front of three thousand fans under the proverbial Friday night lights with horns and flutes and refrains of “Hooray for Bobcats” and we only remember the wins and with memories like that aren’t they all wins?

copyright 2012 Steven Harz

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