Two Steps Beyond My Door

Scott Rogers

 

The grass weeps at the back of the barn. The rust gathers, the wind smashes the doors open, the dirt vanishes. Not so much deserted as abandoned is this place, houses surround it on every side; a road lies right in front of its menacing decay. Birds screech, reveling in their new found playground. Nests are built. Next to the barn are three large grain silos which jut up out of the landscape, becoming a part of the suburban onlooker’s horizon. The owners of the land live just to the right, and they've lived there for quite some time. This land used to be empty, an outskirt of the city. But the city moves, the city spreads, and the city grows. Now this land is a testament to a centuries worth of work, surrounded by two decades worth of growth. What used to be a railroad track runs behind the land, since ripped up and left as nothing more than a pile of rocks for the weeds to claim. The silos are cracking, the field in front lies bare most of the year, the earth just waiting to be run over and structured into twenty or so small houses, complete with air conditioning. The growth and reach of the modern world is boundless and unrelenting.
The truth is that no one needs the past anymore.

The grass will die.

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