The Refuge

The Refuge

The only house perched on the only gravel road that split  my uncle’s property, [REDACTED]

“The Refuge” for short.

Our mail appeared in the only mailbox by The Gate, in front of the army of invading bamboo, next to the rotting tree stump, still taller than me, and annually engulfed in wisteria.

Whenever my cousin’s college friends overtook The Dock for the girls to tan and the boys to cannonball into The Lake, my dog whined restlessly at the door until they finally left. The Mound was the farthest area from our house in the Refuge, all the way down the only gravel road, down the steep speed-bumped hill that stopped my bike in its tracks until I was brave enough to ride up.

The Mound wasn’t anything but an enormous pile of dirt my siblings and I would venture to once in a bored blue moon. We carved shelves in its side for our favorite trinkets from nature and challenged each other to clamber to the top, which was covered in unforgiving brambles and thickets.

By now, our trinkets have long since been buried by a bulldozer.

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background of life

she’ll be laughing and crying and she won’t be denying that her emotions are way too out of whack

she’ll be singing sweetly and speaking meekly ‘cause her voice has never had her back

and she has always known that she is just an extra in the background of life

everything makes sense

Oh. The stars. I had forgotten about the stars. They had been replaced by city lights.

Oh. Her hand. Her hand is alive. I guess it always has been.

That’s right. I was alone. She was alone. It makes sense to be together.

Huh.

secondhand

She herself had nothing in particular about her that would make her subject to verbal or physical abuse. She herself was born with nothing in particular about her that would make someone dislike themselves. She watched the life around her like a movie, never feeling truly involved, but that fact not bothering her in the slightest. The only thing that kept her connected to this world was her wild and bucking emotion. Sometimes her best friend would go to her for advice, but not because she knew anything about what was happening to them. They would go to her because they knew that she knew about feelings. They were bad at feelings. So she felt for the both of them. She would tell them whatever she felt about what they were feeling. She never knew if she was helping. She liked to think so. And she felt very deeply about them and these problems that were so important to them. She found that it was important to her as well. She found that helping them out with their baggage helped her sort out her own life, even if she never went to anyone else with questions. And along the line, she started to wonder if she was so comfortable with giving all of this advice because she was similar feelings. But that didn’t make sense, she would know. She knows about feelings. But that one thought made her think, maybe she really didn’t know that much at all.

That One Scarf

There is this one particular scarf that follows me across the city.

You probably know the one, you’ve probably seen it,

as many times as I have. I’ve known it for as long as I can remember.

It is cheaply made from felt, soft but easily frayed,

and patterned with plaid, black and white with red veins, on drab beige.

My dad has one, and I don’t know where he got it, where they all get it from,

but I recognise it like a beacon every time I see it wrapped around the neck of another

person in the subway or on the sidewalk.

The wearers vary immensely— not all of them are middle-aged Italian fathers. I’ve seen it on college students, on old women. People young and old are united by this strip of

cloth that loops them together

through time and space.

My eyes follow the scarf when I see it on the street, and it greets be like an old friend, a

reminder of

where I came from

and

how lucky I am to still be here.