#133

you and i were never black and white. but i've always been a little deeper, a little darker. like a marker fresh out of the box; i draw clean lines and sometimes bleed through the paper.
you... how can i describe you? we have an old tin can of haphazard pens and markers, sharpies used for everything from fake tattoos to garage sale signs and the eventual moving boxes with my name scrawled on top. try as i might, i can't get any of those markers to draw a full line. every color is a lighter, dried up version of itself.
in terms of black and white, i guess i'm the villian. but at least i'm not waiting, drying up in an old tin can.

#132

as rarely happens, i was struck by a brief moment of poetic genius today. finding nothing pockets but an old napkin, i scribbled word after word to make sentences that made whole thoughts, expressing my love and my life and my passions all over that piece of recycled paper.
i meant to give it to you.
i meant to watch your eyes tear up and watch the light reflect back to me.
i meant to make it all the way home with dinner.
damn squirrels and knee-jerk reactions.
damn the spilled coffee all over the dashboard.
why, why, why did i put that napkin back in my pocket?
so it seems my thoughts were recycled before you could hear them. guess that's my part to save the earth.

#131

the stereotypically red and white checkered picnic blanket caught a slight breeze and teased her bare feet. this is the happiest i've been in a long long time she thought. she said it aloud and looked over; he was stretched out, hands clasped over his chest. he smiled but didn't open his eyes.
"what do you want out of life?" she reached over and shielded his eyes from the evening's last bit of sunshine.
one eye opened. "tomorrow."
"what's special about tomorrow?"
shrugging, he closed his eyes, pressed her palm to his lips.
he peeked out again and she sat expectantly, waiting for his answer.
"haven't experienced it yet."
"what about in a year? 5 years?"
suddenly he understood what she was looking for. but he wasn't ready to give it. "can't have a year if i don't have tomorrow."

#130

at fifteen he vowed to never be like his parents and worked for 3 years to leave the day after his 18th birthday. with a pocketful of traveler's cheques (for years he used only those; they made him feel eternally nomadic), pre-stamped envelopes, and the kind of charm that few still possess, he headed out.
every day since was a new adventure. he'd been to foreign countries but never college. he worked for the poor- serving and eating at soup kitchens, climbed mountains, even traveled with a circus for awhile, picking up every trick he could learn- from fire-eating to swindling.
he'd been to nearly every library in every town he rattled through, fixed strangers' motorcycles, and helped college kids pack up for home.
he started each day unencumbered. only one specific goal in his mind.
today he thought. today, maybe i will fall in love.

#129

there was an old one-room schoolhous, a "piece of history right in front of our eyes!" as her dad exclaimed, and the stairs out front were concrete to replace the rickety wood. peeling red paint stuck out and up and down and she wondered who had painted it and if it occurred to them that red made for a highly cliche "historical" schoolhouse.
the water pump out back still worked and she stuck a bare foot under the cool, chugging water and looked at the surrounding woods. the trees were low, many young, maybe fifty years old, one hundred. she wondered if any history was still real, if this was real now, and how rugged and exotic her life might appear to someone 200 years from now, feeling water on their feet and looked at a cracked, red-paint-chipped building.

fortyeight

They walked at the curbside, hand in hand but hearts apart. The lights in the windows of the high-rises are downtown constellations, but they were too busy watching the cracks in the pavement. Corner parks are empty, like always after dark, and when the taxis stream by it's like a jukebox with a hundred four-second songs. Most of them are, like most songs are, about love and finding it or losing it. She thought to herself that it was like her life's story being told in three city blocks.

fortyseven

The sound of shattering glass trickled through the alley, like a loud stream in a quiet forest. His eyes twitched in all directions, but found nothing. He was sitting next to a small concrete staircase, the door behind his head used to belong to a restaurant. Can't tell by the smell anymore, though. Everything smells like rotting.

He wrapped his hand with the shreds of a t-shirt. Last time white, this time blue. His face was streaked with tears, and dirt, and blood, and some of it his. Someday this will make sense, he knew. But not today.