We begin dipping buckets to collect pooling rainwater and let it sail over the wall that separates us from the street. My children shriek and squeal, and I think of Augustus Gloop drinking greedily from Willy Wonka’s chocolate river.
At night he goes wandering around the house with a torch, checking cracks both diagonal and horizontal, rips in paper, a wall detached by 5-6mm from its ceiling.
There is a cemetery close to our apartment in Berlin, one you probably wouldn’t notice while hustling off to work, hidden behind a tall brick wall, enclosed on every side except for a heavy iron gate at the northwest corner.
A single mite crawls up the closet wall, over our initials carved into the wood and covered with a bad paint job. The white paint makes it look like they’re written in snow.
Between May 31st and August 18th of 2019, a photograph hangs on the wall of The Morgan as part of an exhibit on crowds and groups and proximal strangers. Black and white, gelatin silver print, smaller and less boisterous than its companions.
Beyond him lay a stretch of manicured grass and a low brick wall, and beyond the wall the white spire of a church reached skyward. Why, it’s in color, said Mathias.
I seemed to fly to her, my legs fluttering beneath me, the stench of the city—garbage, piss, sweat, metal, people—a wall I punched through. She was in the bar she was always in, and I dragged her off her barstool into the night. “How could you do this?” I sputtered.
The crenellations along the stone ramparts, maybe, because they look like the Great Wall. Or perhaps it’s the soldiers painted into the triumphal arch: in their strange armor, they look like transplants from the Terracotta Army.
In the street leading out of the block, the grids for the hopping game were messily painted with white wall paint instead of loose powder or chalk. Kabeer would always jump through it religiously every time he passed by, and I did the same—one of my pathetic attempts at being noticed by him.
He’s ten. Soon everybody will be here, he’ll see their headlights on the wall. He only gets to stay up until twelve the night before his birthday. His family makes it special, like his own New Year’s. You’re only eleven for twenty-four hours, Dad says. After that you’re eleven and one day, eleven and two days. You’re never just ...
Beyond him lay a stretch of manicured grass and a low brick wall, and beyond the wall the white spire of a church reached skyward. Why, it’s in color, said Mathias.