A wild stranger asked about his fragile state of health,
all the way from an empty indoor ice rink that used to be
the safest small town in America.

It wasn’t real.
All that was just stuff from a demo
someone played for him last year.

It seemed like an honest enough memory,
better than anything from the past six months,
so it stuck around and joined
the other potentially defective fireworks
in the back of his mind.

There’s enough of those
to put every superstore in North Carolina
out of business.

Some of them surprise the doldrums
of a wedding reception/orgy/intervention
with a light show worthy of an overblown Manhattan skyline
that literally comes down on your head from out of the sky.

Some of them wait for answers from religion fervor
and save what little sparks they have for the next caffeine coma.

For a long time he lived with both
and tried to disregard as much reality as those long walks
on the subway train tracks would grant him.

Those walks were wonderful. The trains are always
decades late, and after enough miles it feels like sleeping
and getting away from the hustle of sharp tongues
at the same time.

Even if he ever did hear something or see those lights
straining to continue living after making it around the corner
the train never actually came into view. The noise would die
suddenly, and the unnatural night life would continue
as though nothing had tried to interrupt it.

Falling in love with a southern belle
who had grown up
in Cleveland changed all that.

His schedule became one of hospital visits
and staggering one-man search parties.

Robbing empire liquor stores to make
off the desperate teenagers
who built their new-age high school out of revolution
and didn’t know what to with themselves in the cruise control
aftermath.

The whole thing took a heavy toll on him.
Changing his name didn’t help a bit.

He was on his way to see her,
to either propose or fake amnesia until she burst into tears,
when he heard that voice calling after him.

The car that was just about to take him out
at the crosswalk froze in mid-fury.

Everything did. He felt like it was something
out of Shel Silverstein poem.

It was quiet again.
He took that as a good sign
and made a sharp right at her building.

Things picked up again after he got to the airport on foot
and told the drunk at the ticket counter
to surprise the hell out of him.

04/13/2011

Author's Note: A lot of material was cut from this. The original draft runs something like eight hundred words.

Posted on 04/13/2011
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard