The Legendary Summer

In my backyard there is a short stretch of grass before the forest begins and more or less never ends. Back when our hair drooped to our shoulders and we would only drive with the windows open and sleep with our beds against the wall, we would wander into those woods with blue bottles and ebony pipes to get passionate about life. We would later emerge, chased by squirrels that were aggravated by the stars. There were other nights when we never came out of that forest, and we woke up with wet leaves to our faces and pollen in our hair. More often than not it happened that way, and we would try so hard to remember what had happened the night before, but nothing came to mind.

One night, we walked into the forest without our blue bottles and ebony pipes. It was then that we saw a whole new world. There were old chairs and tables where we used to play card games that we would never remember, and trees with our names carved in the sides and messages that didn’t make sense.

There was even an old rusty car with a tree growing through its sunroof and ivy threading the seams at its doors. The glass from its broken windows mixed in with the broken bottles in an abstract collage on the forest floor. As we walked deeper into the forest, the summer night aftermath seemed to fade. The broken bottles and paper coffee cups became less common and faded into the leaves and branches, but then we found something even more startling. Several bodies emerged here and there among the fall foliage. It was then that we realized that some of our friends were missing.