The Delicate Lawn

The Delicate Lawn
By Josh Simon
From the sky, glass rained upon Ollie’s dirty blonde hair. As we curled up next to each other in a smelly, burnt-out, rusted sewer tunnel, we couldn’t imagine why we were victim to the quick and irrational assault that now faced us. We were soaked from eyebrow to eyebrow in an unforgiving New York winter that scolded you as it fell. The yellow cabs had swirled on and off the roads that night trying to grip the slushy surface like a dog that had just been hit by a train. A slow, chugging like will to move a few more feet before collapsing into the endless heaps of muddy grey snow that would pile so generously in the gutters. New York winters will do that. It was in fact, during a New York winter when I saw my first corpse. Although most people won’t admit it, there is a dark yearning deep within themselves to see a corpse. Some people go their entire lives without ever seeing death in actual reality.
A homeless man had fallen asleep on an outdoor subway platform. He had probably closed his eyes tightly to resist the wind that whips a bare face to a red and scorched plain. His facial expression was still like a concrete golem. I though of the homeless man I had seen that winter as four more empty bottles of Mickeys crashed next to my soaked converse sending shards every direction. I gnawed vacantly on my fingernails as Ollie screamed for them to stop; he begged and pleaded but the violent pitching continued. We weren’t entirely sure why the young kids below were continually throwing bottles that once held liquid happiness but now simply consisted of empty waste. The kids who began to throw the bottles at us couldn’t have been any older than fourteen. They resembled a hostile tribe chasing an estranged colonist out of a nameless African country. With bottles and baggy pants as their sole identifying trait they stood as one.
As the glass continued to crash around us frantically in monsoon like quantities they finally came to a stop. They must’ve been trying to kill us that night as we huddled helpless to some teenagers and a city that was slipping on every cold, unfinished crack in the streets. After waiting another hour, we finally left the tunnel to an empty street mottled with green and brown glass that somehow resembled a fragile and delicate lawn. They resembled a lawn for aesthetics. A lawn that could hold no picnics or baseball games. We walked across the crackling glass beneath us. The pop and hiss of every step echoed through the last part of the tunnel as we approached 5th and 78th. We walked back home trudging past street vendors with hot dogs and honey-roasted nuts. Past the overpriced Indian gift shops and the over salted streets.
It was another New York winter and I suppose everyone wanted to see a corpse.