Ride

—Years. And every morning I was driven down the same road. My father’s back, hugging to his back. My brother between his legs. The rhythm of a moped beneath us, rushing and sputtering. Directed, I imagined then, equally by each of us. It was true that when the weight of my father shifted left, my weight shifted left, and the road slipped away to the right. And always his back was half of my view. I saw two. Like through the wide-set eyes of a rabbit or a fish, only to either side. Townhouses gave way to weed-filled lots, each morning I could only hold on for so long, weed-filled lots gave way to fields of rice, then countryside, before I craned my neck. And there it was. The face of a car growing on the road behind us. A common car, silver and slim, drawing up beside us. The morning light made mirrors out of its windows. Mirrors of me and my brother and my father bending to its edge, our features pressing featurelessly together, a cheek to a back, chin to scalp, two pairs of hands to the handlebars. Then the car sped off. But our reflection went on blinking in my eyes. The passing country, over and over, interrupted by our three-headed foreignness.

Chime

You might hear the chime of a parked car—Or a siren—There is a whole history of chimes down this street and especially in that alley, like closing your eyes and running a finger along a length of string until you hit a stretch that’s studded thick with overlapping knots. If you live here long enough you hear the stories—
The children love the alley. They throw bottles at the walls until the ground is sheeted over with the shards of glass. They laugh into its dead end. Some dislike this. They think that the very young should not remember. Someone with a good intention once lashed lights up all along the walls. But that was years ago and now they’re dead, all but one, which won’t turn off, and under that one, old, inoperable, still-shining light, they say, it will happen again. The children say this into their empty bottles before they throw them at the walls.