supercut — benji & yahel / superhero au
Jan 4, 2024 19:45:12 GMT -5
Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Jan 4, 2024 19:45:12 GMT -5
1982.
New York, New York.
it was the summer that you were moving, and through August i was still saying things like i'll see you again.
we were kids, eleven years old, little shitheads running around. i used to cut last period to come meet you, took the train up, latchkey kid, but your parents were always home. used to think it was sweet of them to drive me back in the evenings. now i think its funny they never let you step foot on the L.
ten years is a long time, but i still think of you.
i remember the misery of hot days in the city, all concrete, zombies shuffling through parks, and the smell of Meatpacking, something sick like refrigerator and guts and exhaust. and then, the peeling map of the trains i studied inch by inch in boredom on the trip, passing derelict lower side ghost neighbourhoods, the seventies showing like the lag of a new bruise.
and i remember the ice cream sundaes with the chocolate shells, kids cracking open fire hydrants in the haze of summer, long games of handball, and buying subs at the bodega, that little orange cat lying between aisles. you had all the latest comics on your shelf, and when it was too sweltering, we'd read about the last great hero of New York City.
didn't care that much, but you liked him, so i liked him. he was dead before our time, and gran used to say we were fine before he came along, and we'll be fine afterwards too.
back in the sixties, she remembers the funeral, how the streets poured with people as his coffin progressed down Sixth Ave, girls weeping and lying flowers down the sidewalk until the streets smelled like lilies, and then smelled like rot. the mayor gave a speech to a crowd bigger than his inauguration. it was all over the news, and the country was in mourning.
she also remembers how the funeral cost nine million. when you're eleven, you don't know what that means. just know you don't even have ten dollars in your pocket.
it was the summer you were moving, i asked you if you'd learn how to surf on the coast of California. i pictured palms and Hollywood and an endless summer. you told me you were gonna be stuck in the suburbs. you told me it still gets cold in Northern Cal in the winter.
i'll see you again, we said to each other. but the sadness of it, how the goodbye lingered, like we knew we wouldn't really. i'll write you, i'll call you. we didn't think we were lying then.
in August of 1982, i used to know your phone number like it was engraved in me.