The vines really have grown. Up the walls. Across the fence. Over the windowsills. Dad used to make us cut them every summer, we would make a whole afternoon out of it. Looking back at it now, that was probably his way of keeping us out of trouble, better to clean up the yard than one of our messes. It's not like we would have much better to do in the summer anyways, working would distract us from just how hot it was. 

But, man, the vines really have grown. When was it that we stopped cutting them? We did it every year, until we didn’t. I don’t think there was much of a reason. Maybe Dad was just feeling tired that summer, or Bobby got a girlfriend, or something like that. We could have cut them, but just never got to it, I guess. 

Maybe we should have kept cutting them, they have really grown since the last time we cut them. That’s probably why there are cracks everywhere, because we didn’t cut the vines. They seem to find their way into everything, y’know? I know Dad used to complain about it all the time, especially when we waited until August to cut them. He would yell at us for waiting so long, saying that it only got worse the longer we waited. One time Bobby tripped over the vines by the gutters and Dad decided to make it into a “learning experience.” We must have been 5 or 6 back then, Bobby was lying on the ground crying while Dad was using a stick he found on the edge of the woods to point at everything he did wrong. I used to think that Bobby would never forgive him for that one, but we still cut the vines every summer. For a long time, we did it like that, every year. We would get covered in sweat and all wanted to take a shower right when we finished, so we made it a competition: whoever cut the most vines would get to take a shower first. That first year we all went crazy, hiding our piles so nobody else could see how many we cut, cutting them smaller to have more, stealing each other's vines. One year I decided to cut them into inch long pieces and had hundreds of them in my pile in the ditch behind the shed. That was when we had to get the man who lived next door to be the judge, Dad and Bobby thought I was cheating. I could probably get thousands of vines out of these, now. 

They sure have grown. It would take a while to cut all of these down, especially on my own. They have gotten all the way to the chimney now. Some years, Dad would put Bobby or me on his shoulders to cut down the ones that got too far up. We started using the neighbor’s ladder when we got a little too big to go on Dad’s shoulders. He never wanted to admit that we had gotten too heavy for him to carry, I guess it hurt his pride. He would say that he doesn’t want a grown man on his shoulders, that his friends would laugh at him at the next poker game. Bobby wanted to go up on his shoulders, though. I couldn’t tell you if it was because he wanted revenge for the gutter incident, or if he had some other reason. I never really could understand the things Bobby did, not then, not now. 

But wow, the vines really have grown. The amount we would have in June used to seem like so much to me when I was little, but this sure is a lot. How long would it take us to cut down this much? It would have to be much more than an afternoon, even for the three of us. Bobby and I might be adults now, but the vines sure have grown. I can’t do this on my own, the vines really have grown a lot. Even the door frame where we used to measure our heights was covered from head to toe. I know that I was taller than Bobby, so it doesn’t matter much to me, but I bet that he would have cut those vines down first if he was here. He always got so mad when I had another growth spurt, even though I had no control over it. Bobby didn’t like it too much when someone did something better than him. It was his idea to get the neighbor to judge the vine competition. At some point, I started noticing Dad putting a few of his vines in Bobby’s pile. I almost made a fuss about it, but he was saving us from an awkward dinner, so it worked out for me, in the end. Bobby had the smuggest grin on his face after winning that summer, it might have been the first time he won. I wonder who would have won this year, if we were all here. The judge isn’t here, either, so I doubt Bobby would have let us compete. If he would avoid losing, he would rather not play at all, he has always been like that. Of course, he preferred winning. Cheating was never out of the question. 

The vines sure are long, aren’t they? I wonder why we never just cut them off at the root, it would have saved us some time and sunburn. I guess Dad wanted to keep an eye on us, which was reasonable, in retrospect. I don’t think it was usually me who he wanted to watch, though. Even if it was, he stopped after a while. I can’t remember which summer we stopped cutting the vines, but we must have been out of high school at that point. We might have stopped because summer wasn’t the only time we could get into trouble. We couldn’t exactly start cutting the vines once a day, now, could we? There wasn’t enough yard work, but there was too much trouble. 

When did the vines get this long? They are even covering Bobby’s bike. He spent every cent that he had ever found on the sidewalk to buy that bike from the kid down the street. It was way too big for him at the time, but he still rode it around the neighborhood like he was the coolest boy in town, although I don’t think he could have looked like it with that stupid haircut. It was his most prized possession, and to Dad’s dismay, he rode it everywhere. I’m sure Dad would be happy to see it all tied up now, in these vines. He wouldn’t have believed how long they got, how Bobby left the bike behind. Well, I guess if anyone would believe it, it would be him. He saw something in Bobby that I couldn’t, at least until recently. We were only children, and boys will be boys, at least that’s what everyone said. 

I wonder what Bobby would have thought about the vines. They really have gotten long. Dad would probably be embarrassed to see this many vines on the house. It was his everything. Sometimes I wonder if he loved that house more than he loved us, but I doubt he would admit to loving either. He always said that he hated the house, the bulky grey stones, the dark wooden door that didn’t open right, the endless vines. Dad never did speak his mind, and when he did, he ended up regretting it. The first time he talked to us about money, Bobby tried to ask one of the neighbors to adopt him. We were old enough to get jobs, or just stop asking for so much, but Bobby took the first chance he had to leave. With this mentality of his, I was surprised how long he stayed in that house. It’s not like he had anywhere else to go, but I figured he would rather live on the streets than in that house with us, hearing all of the things he used to say. I guess this must have been after we stopped cutting the vines, and now they have gotten this long. We should have kept cutting them, maybe they wouldn’t have grown this much. Maybe things wouldn’t be this way. Maybe I wouldn’t be standing here alone. The vines really have grown.

The Vines Really Have Grown

by Kate Bucek

Kate Bucek is an East Asian Studies major with minors in Korean Studies and Creative Writing. She takes inspiration from the various ways people are connected to each other around the world, as well as the unique flows and rhythms present in different languages, since she knows English, Korean, and Spanish. While her main focus is poetry, she also works in short fiction when inspiration strikes. In 2021, she earned honorable mentions in the Scholastic Writing Contest for two of her short stories.