By Noya Kohari
Small Eternity
I’ve got pictures of another place passing by me now and I think, how pretty they are, and how they’re not and they make me smile in a way that says how good it is to be far away. Because, for a small eternity, I’ve been in a different place where all the houses are pink or sky blue and all the lawns in front of the houses are green and fresh and all the wall-to-wall carpeting is soft. And all the malls are air-conditioned like all the cars that smell like they’re new, even when they’re not. And all the kids like playing healthy sports and eating junk food and all the mothers like loving the kids and making them junk food and all the fathers like working late and returning to their soft carpeting. In the summer it’s warm there and in the winter there’s white snow that covers everything. And then everyone wear their soft gloves and soft scarves and go out to play in the fresh, soft snow. A small eternity, white, 15% Jewish, a small eternity in suburbia.
Ultimate Frisbee in the Park
It’s dark and we can go out but it’s actually even more moist now. On the lawns in front of the houses, the folding chairs and plastic tables are left all lonely because there’s no more sun to roast their owners. So we walk a bit now, in 90 degree turns between one street to the next. The park is illuminated. There’s a fenced baseball field and small aluminum bleachers outside. On the other side there are picnic tables spread out. On the bleachers Halie and Sam look at the boys playing Frisbee. All their shoes are stacked under the light, and all the bugs fly around this orange light. Later there will be a boys vs. girls game. The air here is so thick and black, and orange. And the grass is cold to the bare feet and the Frisbee flies right next to me, almost touching but I manage to move. It spins and lands on first base, moves a little that white square that was accidentally left there. The boys will win after Mike will knock Halie down on the grass and she’ll limp back to the bleachers. It gets late so Mike takes Halie home on his bicycle and we’ll walk like small mechanical creatures in the clean maze that is suburbia.
Take Off
Soft suburbia, I loved you. You were good to me even though I soiled the privilege of your fresh lawns with bad words. You cuddled me and cradled me even though I insisted on staying awake. And you didn’t give up on me and insisted that I also become a part of you. From the height of my window seat on the airplane I saw you getting smaller and smaller, patched with shadows of white clouds that clouded the shiny red roofs, that darkened the blue of the small private pools and the small children that splashed inside them, that confused the ruler-straight streets and the huge parking lots adjacent to giant stores, speckled with safe family cars. You almost disappeared and then you disappeared entirely and instead of you, came the white screen of clouds. And if I would stay a little longer, your thick air would have dazed me more and more and that refrigerated recycled air of yours would have become the perfume of my life and I would have been another organ of yours. Another tentacle of suburbia that, very slowly, strangles its own neck as well.