Claudine. Any notes today?
Sertab. Yeah, paper boats and streams.
Claudine. Want to tell me about it?
Sertab. There was this park. I can’t remember driving into a parking lot, but we must have. My parents and their friends would play doubles on courts with cracks that black ants would run in and out of. I remember trees, not like a forest, but more like a roof, making a shaded, hollowed out shelter. I can’t remember being able to hear the stream down old skewed up concrete stairs, but I do remember what the water should sound like wrinkling over and around top dry stones my brother and I would stand on, bending over without getting our shorts wet. I remember silver flecks reflecting from the silt. It must have been rich soil.
Claudine. Did you make paper boats to float down the stream?
Sertab. My dad had newspaper from him. Probably from the car, or maybe he found it lying somewhere and got the idea to make paper boats. The boats were enormous, capable of cracking through rock in its path. I imagined it that way. We made three boats. It would have made sense to make a boat out of a sheet from the coupon section, but I can’t remember if we did. We made our boats and put them into the stream.
Claudine. What happened?
Sertab. They never went straight with the flow of the stream curving them to the side. The water would soak in and undo the tight folds we put into our paper boats. I can’t remember them sinking, but they must have.
End. Paper Boats in the Stream