Bring on the Fall

Dug this up in an old notebook, still kinda dig it.
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She works at the bank. I go inside because I can't hear her over the vacuums-- and the bullet proof glass doesn't flatter either of us. She talks about growing up on the prairie, that holy land untouched by shock collars, and I try hard to imprint the image in my mind of the two of us dancing with her naked butterflies in a field of wheat, cigarettes dangling from our mouths.

Personally, I get into the end of the world, and say what you want, but the suspense is the only thing keeping me alive. But who wants to admit that to a potential whatever thingy? Why spoil that summer feeling she so beautifully floats across the cool marble counter like a balloon through a broken window? With every expression I try to clear the window's frame of its remaining shards. I don't want to forsake this moment and step out into the street...

She gives me my receipt and smiles.
Bring on the Fall.

November, at the Death

There's Christmas music wilting casually through the restaurant, putting the line cooks to sleep at their cutting boards. The only customers in the place are beautiful, sitting on opposite ends of the same booth, silent at their plates and staring at the door in empty thought, chewing and chewing and chewing. No one walks in, no one talks over the music. But the bosses are in and dancing like fucks between their emaciating employees, cooing orders their way, romancing their robots. Another year enters another act of the same god damned play; it's the holidays that are taking aim, again, and everyone is right under their nose.

Nothing Uncommon, I Suppose

In an ordinary turn of Midwest events, the sun has dipped behind some clouds whose intentions have yet to be stated. I just put down my book to step outside for a cigarette. Outside the nurses are filing in random intervals past our house in their scrubs, making the trek from hospital to hospital parking lot which is at the end of our street. If eye contact gets made (which is unlikely), it takes only a second to break things off in what I can only assume to be a mutual manner.

I sit down on the railing on the right side of the porch, stage left if that’s where you are watching. There’s a tall gray-bearded black man in sweat pants and a t-shirt ambling down the road in the opposite direction of the nurses. I check my phone to see if the girl I’m supposed to be going out with tonight has called. Nope. The gray-bearded man says indistinct in my direction, I just look blankly at him and up at the clouds. Nothing uncommon, I suppose. Is it going to rain or not?

A completely black cat I’ve never seen before, I don’t think, comes up the stairs and starts walking to the opposite side of the porch (stage right) immediately. Has it seen me? I don’t think it’s seen me. It crawls through the gap in the railing and sits down on the outside rim of the porch. It lets its tail go slowly up and back down onto the concrete in the quiet and controlled way that cats do. She turns around (I assume now, for whatever reason, that she is female) and catches my eyes. Her eyes are a yellow I didn’t know existed. The gray-bearded man has turned around in the middle of the sidewalk to look back at something I cannot determine. I begin to think he might have something to do with this cat, but he turns back around and quickly dodges a couple nurses who were walking side by side. They don’t bother to respond to the near disaster.

Her eyes are still locked on me. I make a clicking noise and motion with a little hand, low to the ground, for her to come closer. Knowing my history with cats, I hardly expect it to do much but stare at me until I go back inside; this cat walks towards me immediately. The wind starts whistling through a few nurses’ hair and blows my almost empty pack of cigarettes on the ground. She lets me pet her for a little bit and then walks between my legs, rubbing against them and the railing. The gray-bearded man has turned around once again to say something (by this time he’s almost to the end of the block), to which one of the nurses turns around and turns back again quickly, but I swear he’s looking for the cat. But she’s quietly pacing around at my feet. I toss my cigarette into the ash tray, sadly, say goodbye and walk back inside. Looking out the blinds, instinctually, I see it still staring back at me through the glass as the first few drops of rain begin to fall. I turn around to go to the bathroom and wash my hands, I’m allergic to cats.

The 39

"Hey! Can you let us off here?" the lady yells at the bus driver from just behind her man's shoulder. She rattles the back doors a little, in vain; the green light above them hasn't turned on. "Hey!" she yells again, a little louder, a little higher pitched. Her man is still standing in the aisle, looking at the door or at her.

"Bus stop is across the street," the bus driver says. She barely sounds like she's answering a question, more like she's making a general announcement.

"So you ain't gonna let us off here?" yells the lady.
"No," the bus driver says flatly.
"What!?" the lady yells, "you would. You would do that."
"Yes, I would, bus stop is across the street."

There is silence for a few seconds until a baby near the front begins to cry. Finally, the bus makes it across the street. The stop is announced through the intercom by the mechanical lady who lives in the wires, "Thirty Ninth. And. Summit," a little fragmented as the machine plugs in its crossroads. As the bus slows and finally stands still, the lady begins to pace toward the back door of the bus, licking her lips, clearly still livid.

Finally she looks back up towards the front and hollers over a group of people, "I hope you sleep real bad tonight!"
The bus driver finally looks back and chuckles a little, replying "oh honey, I never do".
Her man just looks at her and says "let's go".

The rest of the bus' passengers lean back in their seats, the baby still cries, but everyone else has stopped looking either concerned or bemused and most resume the calm faces they try to put on when going one place or another.

A few stops later, a young, scruffy looking dude pulls the cord to be let off at the next stop, "39th. And. Roanoke."

As he gets off and steps out into the cold, he yells too, "thank you!" and in a trailing echo she might not have heard "I hope you sleep well tonight."