Member-only story
From There to Here
Once more, for regular readers. This is the second of four entries i’ll be entering into the Medium Writing Competition (details here should you feel tempted).
The first entry is here. And none of this is exactly like my usual output, but hey! Nothing ever is. Hope you like it.
Now read on.
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Entry. Re-entry. Implicit in both, a sense of going; of crossing a boundary, a threshold. Yet crossings-over have been ever dangerous.
Across the ocean, either as global explorer or desperate refugee, may bring you a new world. Or it may bring a watery grave. Cross the Iron Curtain, as was; escape to freedom. Or death.
Once upon a time, summers meant visiting family in Poland. One year, on the East German border, the guards warned us not to stray from the allotted path.
Why so?
One grinned; gestured to burnt-out wreckage in a field just downhill from his post. A minefield. A car whose owner failed to apply the handbrake.
This is what happens when you stray.
Down to earth with a bump, or a burn. Yes, i watched Apollo 13. So, now i know the first rule of piloting a spacecraft: too fast, and you burn up on re-entry…
