A Place To Forget.

I remember when we used to play with small cars on your messy wood floor and drive them into our vast imaginations and through large forts made of patterned sheets and blankets. We were big like forest giants and small like black ants scuttling on the playground. We could fly out the tallest apartment window and endure the deepest waters of the public pool. We made it so we were invincible to the sounds of apartment tenants banging on doors and yelling parents and we were so absorbed in our happy little lives, for a little while until the night crept upon us; when I had to climb to the dirty top bunk and you laid underneath. You were my safety blanket keeping me warm from the cold chill of the sounds next door and when you fell asleep it was ripped off of me. I was left to fend for myself under your yellowing ceiling glistening with glowing stars.
When I woke you would always be there watching me with your big brown eyes and light brown face resting on the bed waiting for me to wake from my nightmares. Those nightmares we shared were not of those that six year olds usually have about things like giant rabbits and monsters in the closet. My terrors in the night were of being bullied for the rest of my life and that the hunger pains would never go away. Yours were of being kicked out onto the streets by your landlord and of being beaten by your dad. But these didn’t stop us because we knew that we nor any super hero could stop the inevitable. So instead we made our own lives; ones that only we could see. Ones where the streets of downtown were forests with skyscraping trees made out of street lights and where police where dangerous wild animals that could snatch us up and lock us away in small caves on the other side of town.
When we were finished with downtown we went out looking for new places to make believe, we walked passed the abandoned buildings falling in rubble and the smoking factories until we found a patch of green; a small woods in a city of smoke filled with new adventures and good memories. But when we stepped our little feet inside it wasn’t filled with forest animals and smells of pine but rather old furniture laying in a clearing of broken glass and used needles. Even with our disappointment we kept coming back because it was a soundless isolated cove that was all ours. We went everyday climbing trees and using our super powers in solitude were the non-believers wouldn’t see.
One day I didn’t sleep on that top bunk and didn’t accompany you down the long streets to our secluded world. I stayed in the man made one of older thoughts and rational thinking; the one that made us afraid to close our eyes. You walked passed the abandoned buildings and abandoned people forgetting your super powers back at home in your closet next to your cape and mask. Forgetting your sidekick.
You wandered in those dark woods feeling protected by the large trees and familiar furniture and didn’t give it a second thought when you saw that man sitting in our lazy boy living room chair. You must have thought that anyone that could see our world was nice and trustworthy but what you forgot is that there are villains and they live in the super hero world just like we did. You should have flew away the moment you saw him but you didn’t you pulled up a musty chair next to him in the clearing of glass and empty bottles of super glue. You asked him questions like how he knew about this place and he asked you the same when all of a sudden that dirty, scraggly old man jumped at you violently. He had the intentions of cutting out your tongue with a rusted knife that he drew from his pocket. He grabbed your mouth tighter to stop you from screaming and waking the neighbours. You kicked violently realizing your mistake and managed to break free of that high homeless man.
We don’t go into the woods anymore and now that we know the adult world can break into our make believe stories we stay out of there too. Now we are stuck in a world we don’t understand like strangers on a new and crowded planet. This world has grown between us making it hard to see you on days other then New Years Eve. All that I see of you on this one day is you blowing slow thick smoke and curse words from your lips.
Now when I sleep on that top bunk I cry myself to sleep and notice that those old stars have since been plucked from your sky. When I wake I don’t see your big brown eyes anymore so I curl up in my cotton blanket and run away into our old world; the one of super heroes and flying and of being happy. The one I used to run away in with you.