Sometimes

In the quietest moments of the day

Inside my head

With my heart on my sleeve;

the world passes by around me

In seconds, made into hours

slow and sweet

The real becomes the illusional

The delusion becomes the tangible

Sometimes

The only time I feel is 

in the loudest moments 

alone in my head; the world is raw

and my senses flow and emotions 

unchained, unsurpassed and unabridged

my reflection is our reflection 

Memories, the past relived 

the choices unmade to be remade

the outcome yet to BEcome 

a moment frozen to be criticized 

A scrutiny to become immortalized 

Morality to become challenged 

One stave at a time, one breath at a time

An inhale of the world around me

An exhale of accepting the things I could not change

And cannot change 

An aerial view of the things that 

claw away at me, 

chip away at me until

a ghost is all I know of myself;

A perversion left from the erosion

and an exoskeleton left behind.

A tidal current of the choices I made

And we make;

The sad things that I cannot express except for in those moments,

inside my head.

and in those moments, I let go

the tears I dare not let fall

and feel the things I will not feel

not in front of you

not in the view of anyone

To be made human inside my head

Is the sweetest surrender yet. 

A quiet, melancholic moment.

only for a moment.

We both give an awkward laugh. His joke had been bad, but neither of us wanted to admit it. At least he had attempted a conversation instead of keeping the tense silence. That had to count toward something. Besides, someone who was brave enough to tell a corny joke couldn't be that bad. That was the thing about strangers; you could never tell who they were. For all I knew the man jogging next to me could be a psychopath. That would tend to be my luck. Though his soft blue eyes and kind smile painted him as someone with a creative personality. Perhapes he was a writer or even an actor. That would not be my luck. 

"Whats your name?" he gave me a sidewards glance. I hesitated, momentarily entertaining the possibility he could actually be a psychopath. Deciding he probably wasn't I answered.

"Tally," I said. He repeated my name as if to see how it sounded when he said it. A smile graced his lips.

"That is an odd name, I like it," he said, "I'm John. It's a pretty average name right?" 

I nodded and tried to keep from smiling but failed. In the back of my mind I started to peg him as an artist.

"Your quiet for a girl," he said after another lapse of silence. Reallizing he sounded slightly sexist a red tint came over his already flushed face. "That came out wrong! I mean that all the girls I've met are really talkative," he stumbled over his words. I finally giggled a genuine laugh and slowed my jogging to a stop in an attempt to catch my breath. He stopped beside me with a slightly puzzled, yet amused look. His dark hair was still perfect even with the wind that seemed determined to at least ruffle it.

"You meet a lot of girls then?" I teased. The wind succeeded in blowing my own chesnut brown hair into my eyes. I brushed it behind my ear with his eyes watching my every move.

He shook his head and grinned revealing naturally straight teeth. "No, I speak from having many conversations with my sisters. They do love to talk," he ran a hand through his hair and it finally became ruffled. Without giving him warning, I started jogging again. After a moment he was back by my side. 

"If you don't want to talk to me just say it!" he laughed. 

I looked behind us at what had motivated me to get moving. "It's not you, it's him!" I said picking up my pace. John followed my eyes to spot a large Rottweiler running our way. The big dog's leash trailed behind it uselessly. The owner was shouting, running, and failing to catch the dog. John also picked up his pace. 

"Want to have dinner with me if we manage to outrun the dog?" he asked a slight panic noticeable in the humor that he tried to fill his voice with. I glanced back at the dog which was gaining on us. 

I was almost sure now that John wasn't a psychopath so with a leap of faith I said, "Yes," 

By aslan and caffeine_chaos

Be still, lest the shadows creep

The candle burns itself asleep

Fantasies come alive to die

Flame to ash to flame again

Such is the weary wary way of men

The smoke will always flirt with sky

Be still, let the shadows creep

I fall I fall I fall too deep

I only trust myself to lie

She unfurled the grip, plastic and all,

And placed it's end on the tip of the neck

And began to spin it.

The grip overlapped predecessors

Tautening and tightening all the while.

Shortened to a nub from the pulling and tugging,

It was time for a trim.

Your every word is a brand,

Sizzling and permanent,

Claiming every speck of my mind.

As yours to keep.

And each word burns me,

Hotter and hotter,

An internal inferno within me

Searing the surface of my consciousness.

Slowly turning my thoughts to cinders.

Until nothing remains

But a single, smoldering flame,

Forever burning, among the ashes

For you.

An old Navajo walked out of the station eating an orange. I nodded to him and smiled. He said nothing. He stood next to me under the hood.

​“What is it?” his voice was angered, aggravated and aggravating.

​ ​“I don’t know.”

​“What happened?”

I told him. He walked away slowly and came back with another. He got behind the wheel and cranked it. His buddy stayed under the hood. I walked inside the station and bought a drink.

They were standing over the engine, laughing. His buddy had one tooth in his head. I asked the first one what was wrong with it. He wiped his hands down his shirt and shook his head, smiling.

​ ​“It’s very bad.”

I stared at his friend. He nodded and smiled. I looked at his tooth.

​ ​“How bad?”

The other one answered. He was the boss.

​ ​“Head gasket’s blown. Much money.”

​“How much money?”

​“We’ll do it for nine hundred.”

I only had six hundred on me. I told him.

​ ​“Nope. Fix it here or we tow it to the junkyard.”

I had the extra key in my wallet.

​ ​“Alright. Fix it here.”

I asked him how long it would take. One solid day. I took my bike out and rode into town, into that place.

The car lots there were useless. They either had nothing I could afford or anything I would trust. I rode back. They had the van on the lift in the garage. I found the boss again.

​ ​“Listen. I really only have six hundred dollars. Can’t we do something here, I mean, we’re both people.”

He scowled.

​ ​“You’re not my people. Nine hundred dollars. That’s a good deal. Somewhere else you’d pay twice as much.”

​“Well, I don’t have it.”

He looked me up and down.

​ ​“Where do you live?”

I shook my head. He smiled.

​ ​“Maybe you can work here for the money.”

​“Where?”

He laughed.

​ ​“I’ll make the call. Job’s hard. Very hard. Maybe you’ll quit.”

I asked him what it was. He uttered one word: digging. He told me I could sleep in the van until I paid it off, but he would charge me a little extra for rent. I thought quickly about catching a bus, but there was nowhere I wanted to go. I couldn’t hitch a ride out with my bike and my things. Arizona was not an option. I told him to make the call.

I slept in the van that night in the garage. It was still dark when one of the Indians banged on the door.

​ ​“Get up! Time for work!”

I had the sheet of paper with directions and set out on my bike. It was a four mile ride through the dusty roads and paths. I saw the site. A long, long line of Indians on their knees with narrow shovels trenching into the ground, a truck going slowly in reverse with a giant spool of cable they laid carefully into the trench. They were shirtless and moving quickly, and the foremen screamed at them. They were an endless line ripping a tear in the desert, the line of dark red backs and elbows moving like a long machine. I was my soul after death and I was standing at the gates of Hell.

I found the lead foreman and told him who I was.

He yelled.

​ ​“YOU’RE LATE!”

I tried to explain. He threw a shovel in my hands.

​ ​“Three feet deep and two wide. NOW!”

I squeezed in between two big Indians. The foreman ran up and nudged me with his boot.

​ ​“NO! You bring up the FRONT!”

He walked me up to the front of the line. It was a long walk. The Navajos peered at me with my shovel, and they jeered me. At the front of the line the foreman pushed me to the lead. I’d had it with him. I turned and held my shovel to swing at him. He jumped back and pulled out a long blade. I yelled at him.

​“FUCK YOU!”

The line burst into laughter. The foreman laughed with them.

​ ​“Just dig, white boy. You’ll quit before an hour.”

He put the knife back in his boot and walked away. I dropped to one knee and saw the ditch. I would work the day then sneak out with the van before the Indians came back to the shop. I began digging. The other workers laughed. Their laughter made me angry. I dug furiously for an hour. I made sure to stay in front of them, to beat them with a widening gap. One of them yelled at me to slow down. I heard his friend.

​ ​“Don’t worry. He’ll get tired.”

I thought of all the things that sickened me. I found a reservoir of hatred inside my arms. I dug on. Three or so hours passed. It was time for everyone to drink.

​ It was a long wait for the water ladle. There was a huge steel trough and we all lined up to drink from that ladle. When my turn came I took two or three gulps then another foreman grabbed it.

​ ​“That’s too much, white boy.”

Everybody laughed. They still had ten minutes. They found corners of shade by the trailer and sat. I walked back to the ditch and kept at it. They yelled at me to take a break. The foremen told them to keep quiet, that they were disgusted that a white boy was making them look so bad. I kept digging. I was yards out from them. They had to cut their break short. They were moving as fast as they could, but I had plenty of hatred in me. At one point a foreman blew his whistle and we stopped. He ran over with his tape measure and stuck it in their part of the ditch.

​ ​“Too damn shallow!”

A big worker stood up and looked at me. He ran his finger under his throat. I asked him if he was tired, and the line howled. I kept going, faster and faster, delirious from the heat. My skin was burnt.

​

After the next hour everybody hated me. I didn’t care. I would never see them again. We worked until dusk. At the trailer where I had my bike chained the tires were knifed, and they were watching me. I paid them no mind, picked up my bike and carried it on my shoulder up over the hill where they couldn’t see. Then I set it down and collapsed. I watched the hot and dead sky turn circles over my body, and I remembered the pier in California, meeting Greg, my genius painter buddy from Vegas, and Roll, another genius painter who had just moved to Vegas from Florida, and they were in town by the pier, and we rode our bikes all day, practicing new tricks in front of the ocean. I remembered back further, to jumping on a Greyhound bus from Phoenix to Venice Beach, with three hundred dollars in my pocket, the first time I’d left home. I liked it there, and I lied about my age to get my first construction job I had found in the paper while drinking coffee in front of the ocean with my first girlfriend. She was seven years older than I was, with plenty of neurosis. Her name was Kim and she lived by the beach there in Venice. In six months she became the enemy, and I escaped her one morning while she was asleep. On the hot dirt, I thought forward from her, to a beach house where I had been a renter, living with an after-hours alcoholic and her lazy eye and her husband, Cliff, who was a psychologist and latently homosexual, which occurred to me on the hot dirt was the reason he always had a pipe in his mouth. I remembered leaving there, and my laundry getting stolen from the dryers in San Diego, and I remembered going to jail in Tijuana and being beaten over and over. But mostly I remembered nothing, and it was supposed to be dusk but the sky wouldn’t budge. I heard the rumbling of tires coming behind me. I picked up my bike and kept going. They blew by, yelling, hooting, flipping me the bird, leaving me in a cloud of dust. I set it down and walked it. A mile before the station the two mechanics pulled up in an old car.

The boss nodded at me.

​ ​“We fixed your van.”

I stared ahead and nodded. I felt him look at his buddy and smile, then look back to me, “See you in the morning.”

I nodded ahead. They wouldn’t see me in the morning. They wouldn’t see me again.

The van wasn’t in the garage windows. I walked around back and dug the key from my wallet. I threw my bike in the side door and sat behind the wheel. I could see the last traces of sunlight crashing into the desert. Then it was dark. I turned the key. It purred. They had done a good job. I crawled in back and laid on the couch. The van had no wheels, they had it set upon jacks.