I my best to transcribe the audio for those not able to make out all of it (i couldn't for some bits but I think most of it is there)
1. You live with your mother and I was so jealous of you both, out in the woods. Trees all engraved in like it was November the whole year round. Still, that's practically a cut path through to find your place, though. It's funny how I always ended up there, even when I thought I'd gotten lost.
2. You used to tell me, so proudly, your mother had built the homestead herself. Done it mostly alone, and still carrying you. She always shrugged and said most of it was already there when she found it. Those three grey wood buildings in the middle of that weird little ................ Your mother would say their frames were only standing because the two of you live there. That they'd lose something and fall apart if their inhabitants left. Something beyond the physical state of neglect, she'd implied. I didn't buy it. I was stubborn back then. Still am. As always.
3. There were woods behind the school too. Remember? Went down there a couple times a ............. mad. My Mother always packed this Poppy seed bread I didn't like. I give it to you and we crawl down the slope at the edge of the field. Those trees wider than the ones all around your house, thicker branches. Bits of wood. Pieces of summer sheen spilled all through the leaves at out feet. At the bottom there was where we'd stop and .............. finish each others sentences and pretend we were cool, older, esoteric, and hard to understand. The way the trees cradled that space, rusted bike frame ....... the edges. A puddle and piss soaked mattress from when we'd been there before. I went back there not long ago. they'd rebuilt the school. moved most of it sideways up the hill. No ....... little field anymore. I didn't really get a good looks at the forest.
4. You never really came over cause my Mom didn't like the sounds you made, the way you talked to her. So I'd always walk to your house. Had to get away from the suburbs, the streetlamps, and gables. All dim and oriental and evening lit. When I got to the last street over, the woods were right there. Just. Just across from the fences and clean houses like the stories we always imitated. We were alone. I'd make sure no one was watching, no one ever was, and cross the street, cut into the woods. Took about ten minutes most days when I found the homestead. You were always waiting outside.
5. We'd sit on the floor of the biggest building, all one room. Huddled in blankets with little balls hanging off like your mother said she'd done in the city sometimes. We'd sit there, leaning against each other in the colder nights, listening to your mother's stories of what you'd find if you went far enough into the woods. And she meant it. She'd say that's where she came from. that there was some kind of entrance there like. Like it was part of the story but also like it was a part of something more than that. Then I remember it was time for bed. Like my mother would never call us. And your mom would pull out the moth themed sleeping bags. And we'd lie there, whispering to each other until one of us fell asleep. her stories always made me feel this comfortable kind of sadness
6. I remember when I heard. I ran through the subdivision next to your woods. Evening light felt deeper than before. I walked into the trees like I always did. Walked for hours. Walked for hours and finally found it. Dead, grey wood. Felt like the walls of the buildings had sagged somehow over the couple weeks since I'd been there last. Felt like not longer than that. I could tell just looking at it. The place was empty.
7. After that, my mom was really good to me even though she hadn't liked you. We moved away and my mom would tell me that's what you had done too. But I'd seen wires and footsteps leading into the woods in the direction I'd never been. I didn't follow because I knew what had been done. Everything felt kind of wrong after that. My Mother's kindness. A handful of other kids I'd meet. The kind of families who lived in those weird clean houses.
8. When I visited, I'd tried to find your house. Thought it might still be there or I could maybe tell where it had been. But that evening light was everywhere. I wondered if you had other houses built out of those thin grey trees I'd run through so many times. If the people there now had somehow absorbed some fraction of the feeling from those days. I thought of when we'd walked through those streets a few times before you'd left. We talked less. Bodies grown. You were taller. We didn't imitate those stories anymore because we understood them then. And we didn't care about what they were trying to say. You said all houses were like that too, that they scared you now that you knew the kinds of people who lived in them. I don't really know what you meant, but I nodded along anyway. You always knew more than me about things I never know how to put words to. I guess I trusted your instincts. We hid in the brush by the overpass until it got dark. you held my hand the whole way back.
9. Y'know, for a long time I wrote stories about the world you must've disappeared to. Thinly veiled trash, y'know. Just missing you, really. I stopped like I knew I would, but it's like being sick y'know? Always comes back sometimes. I just keep thinking about the skin of your hand, those wires trailing into the woods. I'm sorry. Like I tripled y'know? Parts of me. I'll. I'll let you go. I'm so sorry I couldn't do that sooner.