Taste: I’m drinking water. It’s not from the tap like water at my house. This water was bought in a jug. This filtered spring water is clearer in my mouth than the Smokey air I breathe.
I smell the fire most of all. I smell the chemical burn of lighter fluid which Collins almost blew himself up with. I laughed when the tip of the bottle had a flame. (Nervous reaction more than a manic delight at possible carnage I assure you.)
I smell smores, hotdogs and muss melon all snacks we snack upon.
I smell summer sprinkles and the extinguishing flame. Forced out of existence smoke charges into the air in a big show hissy fit. Clouds of gray are pluming up into the black night sky. Dissolved with time faded and forgotten. Flame is a short life lived to its fullest.
Anyway I find myself on the second album listening to The Nightmare of Lady DaDa. It’s a little 80’s feeling but I really like the distant scream you hear for the last quarter of the song. It’s like when you hear something so far away from yourself and you don’t know if it’s a distant siren, a child screaming or simply the wind.
So of course I jump clear out of my skin, splattering blood all over the interior of his car, when he reappears at the driver side door.
We parked further back than the usual lot. Out near the train track it’s an unfamiliar corner of graffiti and trash. (I’d been given two shots back in the kitchen before we even left the house so I had a start before the start.) I took several swigs from my water bottle of death, then we stepped out of the car.
It was around 3 or 4 I believe. It was cold and basically everybody was at Dublin Pub. That was where I wanted to go but this had been Rei’s idea and she said no to the D-pub.
The sky was overcast into a gloomy dark gray. The wind was a bitter breath down the back of your neck. I should have sensed this foreboding but instead I imagined this was what the weather must be like in Europe this week. The parking lot was full of pot holes and broken bottles. Oh Dayton Ohio my home sweet home.
Out on the street it’s cleaner and more familiar. Rei senses a letdown for the night. “Nobody’s out,” she complains. Determined to have some sort of St. Patrick’s Day outing we decided to hang out at Trolley Stop for a few hours until more people appear.
I saw him walk into McDonald’s slowly taking off his motorcycle helmet in slow motion to soft music playing and a light breeze wafting through his hair.
But like a passing gust of wind I find I must move on.
The last thing I say is an apology for puking on her fuzzy black cat hat.
Sunday I wake up around noon with the sun high in the sky. It beckons me to wake up and fulfill the days missions. “What missions?” I grumble between rubbing my eyes and searching for coffee. Our fridge is more like a mysterious cave than usual. I have to search two different shelves and even relocate a water jug. Oh iced coffee, my precious precious friend. (They buy groceries on Saturday, me having not been home much on Saturday the last I’d seen of the fridge it was a barren desolate thing.)
It’s 6:03 on Wednesday the 1st of January 2013. The first day of the rest of my life and some…
It was raining as though the sky were weeping and that would make perfect sense for how dreary and gray it was outside. The red bricks beneath my feet look slick however I find no trouble maneuvering across the parking lot. Second street market greets me by painted wall mural. Words letters, fruit, vegetables and flowers.