I've recently started up work on a new piece (a LOT of it lies untyped in a few random notebooks...) but this is where I think I'm gonna start it...dig...
“This is my story, broken and true.
Take it to pieces, and mend it with glue.”
–John Lennon
It never ends. A spinning game of musical chairs, and I’m always the one left standing. And, if I ever tried to find the floor, it would just give way and I’d go crashing down, and down, and down. Falling for forever; through flashes of black, and blue, and grey. Rooms full of people, always alone.
Sole on a beach, a soul by the waters. The sun in my eyes, the water crystal blue, the sand a fiery white. It burns my feet, and I finally feel alive. The waves come crashing into me, I’m ripped away by the sea; and as I drift into the horizon, a smile comes across my lips. Sand sticking between my toes, hair matted to my face. My whole body sticky and burning with salt.
I open my eyes. The beaches’ sun is far from this place. The warmth of the sand is replaced by the cold of the earth. Small shops and empty roads replace my ocean. The horizon has become the coffee shop down the street. I’m sitting on a cold bench in Depot Park. For a small town, Cullman does have its fair share of nice landscapes. The light spray coming from the small, center fountain has been slowly dampening my face for God knows how long. My dark, shaggy hair is glued to my forehead from the water’s spray. I stretch my arms and close my eyes.
As I raise my arms I feel the corduroy of my jacket pull away from body. The small bit of warmth I’d been clinging to so tightly was gone away in a wisp. What a way to spend a Friday night. Suddenly Ryan Adam’s “When the Stars Go Blue” shatters the silent air. I sing-along for a few seconds in my head, and finally pull my cell-phone from my pant pocket and say hello, as I start walking back toward my car.
“What’s going on, Trey?” The voice of my best friend since high school, Derek, crackles through the light layer of static my phone always seems to have. That phone never did work well.
“Nothing man, just…heading back home. I was at the bookstore.” I lied.
“Cool, you want to get something to eat?” I look down at my watch. Ten thirty at night. My shoulders shrug as an unbreakable habit. For some reason I feel more comfortable by myself, just sitting there in the pale moonlight, watching the occasional car drift by. I covered the mouth piece just long enough to let out a sigh.
“Sure.”