In the days of my fireball, venomous youth, I lived under the deluded auspices of a man needing nothing. Rarely did a compromise cross my lips. Rarer still, was there a span of peace amid the struggle. Nowadays, amid the decay of these higher and higher numbers... it’s all I can do to roll out in the morning and finish my route. Ellen’s uneasy with my teasing about the bullet in the chamber. I suppose, it isn’t so much a joke as a check I'm waiting to cash, a ticket to another place. To keep the peace, I’ve learned to toss it into that dark, well-stocked chamber of things better left unsaid. But I know it’s there. The other day I had a dream. We were having a yard sale. I sold off all my shit to the neighborhood kids: a dollar for Dad’s banjo, a five for that faded yellow Fender, two bucks for a suitcase full of cables, old photographs and God knows what else. Then my ears stopped working and the sky opened and I slid through my clothes, up into the late morning grey... disappearing without a sound. And there she was, looking skyward into that cascade of crumpled dollars, staring through me and my trail of dust.
my trail of dust |
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