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The Wall
When Johnathan died, there was nothing in his mind about his first dog or how it had died in a convulsing wreck on the front lawn. He did not think about his first love or his first fuck. He didn't think about the classes he'd skipped in college, the money he'd earned, or the job he quietly suffered to pay his mortgage. There was only the wall. It was out there still – he was sure – in the neighborhood he grew up in. It was built in the middle of a street separating two neighborhoods; no one really knew why. It was made of cinder blocks, but painted a reddish brown like the color of real bricks. The kids, the cool ones, had added their own paint; cryptic symbols and illegible signatures. Around its base was gravel, and cigarette butts, and bottles wet by the too-young saliva of the kids Johnathan would never dare approach. The trees and dead grass nearby were littered with grocery bags, bits of paper, and mangled, rusted, metal forms. There was sun there, and air that hadn't been chilled by a machine. There was sweat there: adolescent, soaked into your T-shirt sweat; riding your bike or skateboard sweat. There was conversation about your asshole teacher and going to the drugstore to get a soda. The wall was out there; past the window, beyond the yard. It was something glanced at through the dirty window of a school bus as it bounced too quickly down the hill. It wasn't too far away, really, an easy walk, but to Johnathan, it was distant; a journey that his heart was never brave enough to take.