Hi.
Coffee: Colombian, Starbucks Brand (grocery store bought, a gift)
I don’t know whose house you are. I don’t know who owns the property. I don’t know who busted your windows. I don’t know who painted the red alien or the blue alien or the man in bold outlines flipping me off. I don’t know if you used to belong to bedtimes or business. I don’t know how many sets of lips made love to your ample empty beer cans. I don’t know a damn thing about you, you don’t know anymore about me. But I walked inside you last night. Nearby, a couple guys were taking out trash.
It’s gotten chilly. Fall’s here. I met a guy who used to be the best EMT in the county. Now he’s working part-time. He tells me he got beat up a year ago. They broke his ribs, neck, lips, left eye, fingers. He’s still healing. The guys were harassing his partner. From what I could gather, they’re not together anymore. Then he tells me about the older trauma: of working medical, seeing kids scream without understanding, seeing death fold out of the closet like a Christmas sweater. He said the doctors tell him he’s got PTSD. He said he didn’t believe the diagnosis until it was a late winter rainstorm and he was driving real fast and he’d brought that pistol with him and he knew the best spot to cock it and then he had a thought cross to call some acquaintances, no-one close, and they talked to him all night, and they’re the nicest family, and they make the best Thanksgiving Turkey, and now they’re more than just acquaintances and he’s still here. Then he says “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I told you all that.” And I said: “Glad you did.”
I had too many thoughts under your dilapidated eaves. You were down the hill from a parking deck, surrounded in tall grass, but the city still rose around you. I wanted to move into you for five minutes but I couldn’t not see the city, the buildings, the houses, the bright night lighting where I used to live. In the end, I flicked off the flashlight and walked away saying nothing.
Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker
Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN
“A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.” – Robert Frost
Livesay Writing 