I kick up dust that swirls like the pink in the floss machine at the wharf, where gulls cried and planks creaked. And the tide below- ebbed, and flowed. Thousands of gallons felt healing then, the powerful rush meant something higher than me was always watching. The dust floats in circles as it seems life was trended. I kick, kick, kick, around an empty parking lot until I lose that pink in my mind to the pink on my shoe. A sticky gum clump rises with my foot in long, striated strands so I’m thinking about TV pizza cheese like on the commercials when Rory careens into the lot blasting Kendrick out the sunroof of her 2007 Chevy Impala.
“Ror, you took too long.” I roll my eyes and go to step in on the passenger side. Rory spots my pink.
“Don’t track that in here. C’mon, scrape!” Her face looks like the goblins in a video game, the kind that go ‘reeheehee’. She always has that impish thing going on.
I drag my shoe along the concrete in long strokes, up and down. I hate the texture, the shoe’s too dry, the concrete’s too dry, the whole thing’s just dry and I get the clump caught in a crack in the pavement and I can feel cracks in my tongue. Somewhere, way off, there’s the rush of current and eyefulls of life giving blue hues.
“That’s fine T, come on.” Rory cuts through and she’s snickering again. She’s got the cheer for the both of us. Soon we’re crunching down gravelly roads probably towards main street. I don’t ask Rory where she needs to get to today. I finger through videos on my phone and there’s one with a swooning woman captioned ‘when he’s tall’ and I get to thinking maybe I’m not tall. How tall is tall? Well, Rory’s a woman, kind of.
“Rory, you’re a woman. Do women only like tall guys?”
“Well, the women I like are short, but most of the short women like me and I’m tall. But I also like tall women and tall women who are cool like me. I think it’s because I’m cool, not because I’m tall. Does that make sense?”
I’m looking at my phone’s camera and the way the sunlight glances off its surface in fractal vectors. Tilted left and right I can’t count the number of directions the light goes. That bothers me, like there’s something in the moment I can’t capture. That bother turns to terror then appreciation as I think about sunsets on waterfronts: infinite colliding moments that have nothing to do with me. But then the camera’s reflection catches my lips and there’s parched lines running up and down them. I think I look like a corpse. I watch myself as a withered mummy with tatters strewn about, trudging along our ride in the moistureless dirt to the side of the road. How long ago did I die? 1000 years, 10000 years? Who am I kidding? Noone’s going to mummify me.
“I think it doesn’t translate since it’s women and women. Just don’t worry about it so much, T.” Shit, Rory’s still talking about that other thing. Was it important?
“Yeah, you’re right. Thanks Ror.”
Inchoate 