It’s summer of 1978. I’m bored so I head out with my dog Beauregard looking for adventure. Today I decide to follow the train tracks running by my house up the abandoned coal bins. I call them bins, but they’re more like bunkers with solid concrete bays set back from the road – over grown and dilapidated. The whole site is full of broken glass, old trash, mangled metal and smashed stone – a forgotten relic to most, but a potential treasure trove to a nine-year-old boy.

I have all the time in the world and I explore the site – methodically combing the area for anything interesting. It’s old and thoroughly picked over, and yet I always discover something new. I remember the sun slowly arcing through the sky and the hot, dry sounds of summer. I remember the cool shadows inside the bays and the swirling swarms of tiny flying things lurking there. I remember the mossy smells mingled with the fragrance of pine sap and creosote oozing from the ancient broken railroad ties littered about.

Delving deeper into the debris, pain shoots through my foot. I jerk my leg back but my sneaker sticks to an old board. I pull again and the pain explodes. The rusty nail I’ve just stepped on glistens against the pale gray wood.

I limp back to the tracks. I can see the railroad bridge next to my house in the distance. The summer heat makes the image shimmer and ripple. My foot throbs and feels wet as I jog and hop back home. I limp through the door and holler for my mom. My grandmother comes in from the living room. “What’s wrong?” She looks down and gasps. My right leg is splattered with blood from mid calf down to my white Keds, now stained red. The sneaker has become a canvas cup filled with blood. It leaks out of the ventilation holes in the side. She rushes to get a towel. A few days later the deep puncture in my foot becomes infected. I’m taken to the doctor who administers a tetanus shot and antibiotics. It takes weeks and weeks for the wound to heal. I still sport a scar on the soul of my right foot.

Today, another ache begins to bloom. The finality of her words is sinking in and I despair. My hopes, my assumptions, my desires about our future together lie shattered like so many pieces of broken glass.

In time this bleeding wound will also heal and I’ll be left with another scar – this one on my heart marking some of the best days of my life … and some of the worst.