MACON SUN

And sometimes it’s that powerful looking black woman in her early twenties. The one with a heavy array of ethnic inspired jewelry that compliments the milky goldenrod underneath her inviting brown skin. Muscular with disinterested eyes. Like the kind of thoroughbred African woman you see in journalists portrayel of Africa, the National Geographic photograph with a kiss of Americana. The kind of woman you see in Spike Lee movies that can’t be left alone in the final editing without a romantic scene that accentuates her every curve. Yeah, sometimes it’s her..

I realized why I don’t particularly like beaches and the ocean, not for very long anyway. They lack structure and intrigue, too much open space. While grabbing some grub on the Hudson, I looked over to the other side where the trees were slumped over the bank. The visual intrigue of the other side of the river mirroring in chopped streams across the water. That’s when I realized why I don’t like oceans: you can’t see the other side. It’s boring really, and if there’s no other side who’s to say there’s any hope for a greener tomorrow.

I tugged at the tail of her shirt but looked elsewhere, an oddity of human behavior if I’ll say. Instead of looking directly into people’s eyes and speak to them, our eyes peer elsewhere, we look out into the distance and think thoughts but only to ourselves. Now she’d got me talking, talking fast and broken to get everything out. “And.. And I’m never going to be easy to deal wi-” She twisted me around before I had a chance to keep my stubborn balance, “-And I don’t give a fuck, because I’m in love with you.” And it was so theatrically romantic and sappy and borderline disgustingly romantic that all I could do was laugh. 

There will always be those wet nights. The door hits it’s frame hard but it doesn’t shatter. The rain comes down but it doesn’t pour. The tears leak but they don’t flood. She threatens to leave but knows she won’t, she knew this was going to blow over. The torrential nights turn into damp mornings and that’s all it ever really was going to be. You stare at the kitchen floor, a blank one if not interrupted by salty tears. Head in between your knees, biting hard on the neck of your shirt. You over reacted, she defended herself but you took her defense as too defensive. You read nothing between the lines, but you thought you did. You drew a blank scrabble piece but you could have sworn the letters you drew spelled L-I-E. You were angry but shook to control it. You barked but you were the smaller dog in this fight, the confused little puppy trying to exert some sort of control over a situation but it wasn’t your place to do so. It’s only when you step back and listen do you realize maybe you were wrong, and then you realize maybe you fucked up, and maybe you fucked up too many times. But she knows you all too well, she knows how you act and how to deal with it. It wasn’t a happy ending but it wasn’t a tragedy. Just another damp morning.. 

I haven’t decided yet whether he is a squirrelly man with a receding hairline to match his utter disregard for fashion or a very, very tall Elvis impersonator that has yet to realize that he is not, to his dismay, Elvis. Regardless of his physical appearance, his facial visage whispered a hint of schizophrenia, or at least a mild scatterbrain issue. He walked into a Diner with a proud strut, yet when reaching the hostess he collapsed and landed on the counter hard with his hands. He looked up with shaky eyes and began whispering to the hostess, not before taking inventory of the potential weapons and enemies surrounding him, “…There are going to be..a LOT of people here..” he’d said. Not quite sure what he was implying, the hostess asked the standard “Well how many in your party, Sir?” to which she got no reply. She looked up from her handwork to see the man sitting at a two person booth, with no other person, down a ways from her desk. Whenever a waitress would make her way towards him, he’d get up and migrate to the nearest restroom until she went elsewhere. The man left the Diner eventually, without ordering and without his party of unusual number.