Keep Me in Your Heart [Vasco/Emma]

Vasco Izar

Something happens when I hold her

She keeps my heart from getting older

When the days get short

and the nights get a little bit colder

We hold each other

That’s nine, I think. Emma stares at the dogeared map pinned alongside the list of rules for riding in the train. I focus on the thick white lettering, severe and bold, warning us that at any moment we could be dismissed for violating one of the twenty-seven listed regulations (improper visa holders are subject to detention, is underlined, threatening), while she turns to catch a glimpse at the landscape whizzing past. That little patch of grey, in the distance.

Great buildings of concrete rise up from the ground, gray and lifeless, save for chimney stacks spewing out tarry smoke and red flame. Pink and white rose petal soaps came from district nine; I remembered buying some for Raquel as a gift one ratmas, back when she was just past seven. She kept them on her little nightstand and never used them. She said they were too pretty to be washed away, and so she’d let them sit to collect dust instead. I found them when I’d been cleaning out her room, tucked next to an old spool of yarn, and a set of prayer beads. I remember pulling open the little wooden drawer by the brass handle and having to check twice. Somehow, looking back at the smokestacks, they don’t seem so ugly. Not if they could give us that.

Do you ever imagine what it'd be like, if we'd lived in a different district all our lives?

I linger on the tall concrete towers in the distance.

“No lo puedo hacer¹,” I start with a laugh. I move to wrap an arm around her shoulder and kiss her forehead. Our roots are deep enough in the soil of eleven we’re as much the district as the silos of grain or apple orchards. But I see how Emma stares out the window and know there’s something more there. I rest my head back and stare at the plywood squares dotting the ceiling. Nothing comes though, not even a passing thought of mining coal in twelve or laying out on a dock in the sun of four.

Maybe I’ve just been buried too deep in time to ever want to think of being somewhere else.

“I suppose it would make me a little sad,” I say. “To want to go back and do it all somewhere else.” When you get old enough, it’s hard to think about all the things you might miss by starting over. Like meeting Emma under an apple tree and our first kiss, or when I watched Raquel take her first steps out on the muddy shore of the river. Going back in time and living somewhere else, even the make believe, makes my stomach turn. “I don’t know if I’d want to trust that anywhere else could make me as happy as I am.”

The train clatters along the rails and I find myself moved to rest my head against her shoulder. I close my eyes. “No, you see,” I squint, brow furrowed, eyes still closed, pretending. “There’s all these pretty girls in district eight, and they’re all real friendly to me, but – ” I smile, eyes searching. I give a shrug. “No hay nadie como tú².”

I open my eyes and lean back in the wooden pew. What if the Izars never left district eight? Could I have been a tailor, or would I have been stuck working in a factory mending machines? There’s a universe somewhere where I’m in one of the tall brick towers in a little room with a little hanging light, listening to a radio and wondering what it would be like to be out in the fields, under the stars. I hope he finds what he’s looking for, someday.

“Would you have wanted to try somewhere else?” I’m quiet, but brave enough to look into her eyes. “Who would you have wanted to be?”

*Hold Each Other, A Great Big World

¹I can't do it
²There is no one like you