DRIVEWAY

WRITING BY PAUL LIU` DESIGN BY PRITHIUKA KULKARNI

Let us begins with a driveway. This driveway is an unassuming landscape, with smooth concrete and painted over with a yellow-beige color. It is wearing a little bit, so that it does not look too new, too intim idating, and the tiny slant of the whole thing makes it somehow homey, comfortable. It reminds you of something subtle and gentle, like a Rothko painting of three different shades of orange which you had seen when you were younger. You were confused by it before, angry, even, but you feel as if you could understand it now, looking at this driveway.

out, and you can see it thickening, folding in on itself like a wrinkled velvet blanket. What has happened to the boy? you wonder. You are not sad or panicked. Instead there is a quiet excitement building in your stomach, rising to your chest.

You decide you will never tell anybody about this feeling, how could they understand? They would not even begin to try.

us move past the driveway, past the body SPLINTERS

Andtheblood

towards the wooden gate by the side of the house. You have seen this greasy brown gate before, on your way home from work. You have never seriously considered this gate because it appeared to be like any other gate. But now you are looking at it—how crooked and deformed and shabby it looks! The gate is all splintered at its hinges and in different spots, the mahogany paint had chipped or set in all wrong, as if ravaged by woodpeckers. This gate means something, you think to yourself. Moving through the gate means that you will have involved yourself. So far you have seen with your eyes a driveway and a young boy’s bloody body. You have not touched anything, you have not even checked to see if the boy is dead or not. But standing there, studying the gate, you begin to wonder what it means to be a witness.

,

Let us unlatch the gate and move through the cramped side yard with overgrown shrubs and wild weeds. There is no pavement or stone, just dirt and tousled vegetation. You are moving quickly past this garden, the green ground soft under your dull dress shoes. You can see the fence that runs along the outer side of the house which is a dark, battered brown. The greenery has colonized the fence, making it lean and sag towards the neighbor’s side. On the other side is a straight flat wall—identical to the front of the house. You begin to think that the house is just a great big, white box. How terribly bland, you think.

Now we are in the backyard. Somehow, it is just as cramped and overgrown as the side yard. There is the girl. Of course there is the girl. She is sitting on the tiny porch—how does such a porch even fit? you are still surprised and confused about the layout of this house. You look at the girl, who is alive and not dead like the boy outside. The girl is clutching her legs to her chest, with her face pressed hard into her knees. You can see the hems of her faded white shirt sleeves and torn jeans