Little Sailboat

Where have you gone, little sailboat?  Every day I would drive by your house, a small piece of wreckage, seemingly washed far ashore in our little section of suburbia.  The tall grass lapped against the peeling paint of your ancient grey-blue mariner’s hideaway.  There you floated on the sea of grass, next to an old colorless Impala, its soft top only visible above the waves.

There was a calmness about you, still among the commotion of grain.  No one ever left the house.  No one ever came.  Your sea of grass was stopped abruptly by the road I traveled on and I knew you could never sail away.

One summer day you were gone.  Perhaps you set sail at dawn on a patch of thick fog, searching for the ocean you’d left behind.  Perhaps you were shattered on the rocks concealed beneath the dense blanket of vegetation surrounding you.  Perhaps you were never there, an illusion I invented so the small sea shanty would make sense in the pastoral landscape we inhabited together.

You never said goodbye and I mourn your loss.  The windows of the house seem to squint, blocking out your very existence.  It is a sad house now, a house in denial.  Will you ever return?  Will you take me with you in the night?