When I was younger, there was this park and a lake at the centre and for a fee, boat rides were available for leisure. And my father said never to trust your life with the cheap boatmen and a story of a doctor, he said, who lived across the street of the house he grew up in and his family— the doctor and his family had a leisurely outing at the park as one tends to do, and at this lake they had drowned. There was a wooden platform leading off the ground to the waiting boatmen and I remember being so nervous and trembling on the thing, being taunted— “So? What if I moved on this platform? What if I jump now? What if I dance? Will it fall and will we drown?” I snapped at her, I think, my fictional Anne.
I lived across a grey river and I’d see at the shore of it people would be fishing. What could you catch in such polluted rivers? There was a brick railing that’d reach maybe your knees. It was a sad attempt at a railing, a little architectural failure, and it was easy to cross into the shore, into the river.
Across the river was a village. I lived in the city so it was of course polarizing to see. I realized one day my eyes didn't work how they used to when the houses from that side, from the view all melded together and the fire and smoke was difficult to discern— I count five times that from our view we saw a fire, and we’d turn our heads the other way. Me and my Anne, my Annie, my Annabel Lee.
(It's fiction, it's fiction, my Anne is fiction.)