Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)

“Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” - The Arcade Fire (Funeral - 2004)

It’s a hundred degrees outside, but it feels like winter. The kind of winter that keeps coming. The kind of winter that makes you want to hole up in the house with a freezer full of bear and a thousand movies you’ve never seen. I have to squint through the rays - boring their way through the Plexiglas, but I imagine it’s just the reflection of the sun from off the snow.

I have moments where it feels like I’ve forgotten something very important. Like I’ve forgotten to turn off the gas or water the flowerbeds. Then I realize these are mere symptoms of the true problem. The problem that caused all this winter in the first place. The problem that put out the gas and buried the flowerbeds.

I still get cards from my mother. She wants to know how I am. She wants to know if I will meet her in the middle of the town for lunch. She sends money, but all that does is make my skin thicker. Can’t she see we’re all buried here? The entire neighborhood - buried? THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY USED TO BE! CAN’T YOU SEE THAT MOTHER!

The things I do remember seem negligible now. My bedroom. My parent’s bedroom. The bedrooms of my friends. Sheets and blankets and chairs and tables. We built forts. We dug tunnels. Swallowing quarters and making dollars. Knocking heads and splitting our heads wide open. The names. The names we used to know. In my brain. Basted in five colors. These things will not go away. But they are unimportant. What did I forget? God, what was there to forget?

Even in all this heat, the snow never goes away. And all the plans I have for myself. All the ways I can imagine to enjoy the winter in my mind. They start to become too much. The list of things in my day planner. The million things that I have to do. I am overcome with. I don’t want to do any of them. Anymore. Ever. Life becomes tedious and empty. And I am still under this hunk of white with no way to get to you. If things could be like they used to be…
Would it help? If I could dig a tunnel like I used to? From my window to yours?

Instead I let my hair grow long and spread the ashes on the flowerbeds. Waiting for things to melt.

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