CONTRADICTIONS

The lights sail down the river. Slowly and carefully, they flicker down the winding road into the everlasting path of effervescent, luminous darkness. My eyes follow them down their journey until at last their remnants of their light fades from sight. The hesitant candles begin to shimmer, and blur. The stars above, the river below, twinkling upon the broad canvas of gentle death.

 My thoughts run wild. They come, frothing at the mouth as though eager to be unleashed. I oblige them, allowing everything else to take control. I am not myself. This is good. 

A Gatorade bottle sits alone by the crook of the fading sunlight. She stares at it, sugar and water and food coloring sparkling in the incandescent light. Neon signs present their dull glow in that odd time of day that exists between fantasy and reality. Iron bells chime in the background, protectors of the balance.

I notice her. She breathes with uncomfortable loudness. Her eyes belie a lack of proper nourishment and sleep. Her hips bear the weight of children too far gone to look back towards the East. Her skin has begun to wrinkle and sag, peeling away in the places where men have violated her. She is young. She is old. She is wise. She is naïve. Her eyes betray her lust. I love her.

Morning came early one spring six ‘o’clock. I told it to go fuck itself.

She was reminded, most unceremoniously, of the lack of cereal present in the cupboard this morning. She wondered as to why it hadn't been replaced. And then it came back to me. How could she have forgotten, with the vault of the sky upon her shoulders?

And it was so that I came to call myself lord of the in-between places, ruler over the realm of notebook margins and sidewalk cracks and that elusive place in the mind in which time, space, emotion, spirit, and mind are somehow both sharpened and dulled. A place in which everything somehow matters. A place in which the shadow of a young boy riding a decrepit bicycle cast by the light of a dying street lamp seems to hold some special significance. This world is bathed in a musical light, nothing makes real sense. I melt into the wind.