'Progress' by Kim Wildish

My town has changed a lot since I was just a youngin’, running my mouth and getting into my troubles. It was an old place, for the generation that had lived in it before, tall grey buildings that were daunting to look at – they might have had some significance back then, but now they’re just an ode to what was. A grounded reminder of the grey skies that hung above, the kind that affects everybody’s mood, the kind that left any and all under it in a permanent state of sadness. I still remember how it use to be, when I was a kid; the rundown church that wasn’t a place of gathering or worship, unless you were a rat or didn’t have a home to call your own. The rundown and underfunded library, where Ma used to take me and my sister to complete reading challenges, that came with its own metal detector for all the times people had pulled sharps or whatnot over some disagreement. I found that out when I tried to pass a toy Ma managed to afford for us through the holes in it, and the alarms wouldn’t stop blaring throughout the building. I wasn’t a criminal, just a kid, not that it mattered (kids made great skag mules though.) It was the way our town was, everybody was always ready to think the worst of everyone.  The places in this town that were meant to represent what human society was founded on – religion, community, education, etc. – failed.

I look back on my town now, as I walk through it. And damn, the years have done it justice. A place that use to terrify me and subjugate those I knew, seems to have got a whole lot lighter. But that could just be because I got older, less scared and created my own brighter memories in it. The streets are the same, the old routes I used to walk as a kid are familiar, but things have changed for the better. That old church has been reformed into a bar, it’s a gathering place once more, perhaps not in the way powers above intended, but it should count for something. Right? That cesspool became the place I decided to make a brother out of best friend, during an afterhours lock in. It still has rats in the cellar though. The library, while still a little run down and underfunded, had a bus station built close to it. Where drug dealers and addicts hung about, has gone back to being a place of education, as well as a hangout for groups hopping from here to there. It still has the metal detectors, but I think that might just be because it’s hard to take them out. I really don’t know. While me and my sister don’t need reading challenges anymore, it’s still a place we’ve both sat waiting for friends and the like. Something about seeing a pal walking up brightens the day of anybody. I’m blessed I got to see it often.

It wasn’t just the buildings that had changed. I walk down the street to blue skies, the kind of blue that makes everybody happy. The kind of happy that can’t help but leave you thinking of those special people, even the ones that you haven’t quite figured out how special yet – though the fact they’re coming to mind probably says a lot.  

People are so concerned with change, that concern is what stopped this town from changing for the better earlier. It’s something I find myself thinking on whenever I walk these so-familiar-you’re-on-autopilot streets. It can be scary, you can’t know what’s on the other side. Different chances, different prospects, maybe even different friends. As cliché as it sounds, change is ultimately inevitable and something very important, something that shouldn’t try to be stopped. Instead, what you should really do is hope that as things change, the people that plague your thoughts often; the brother you never had, the friends coming your way, that someone you may have just figured out meant a whole lot, anybody you’ve decided to let into your circle of near fatal happiness and human indecency, change and progress with you.