They rise, drawing on narrow, folded
shadows for support against the
cold, unbalanced wind, that seems
most hurried just before morning's
faintest yellow smears slap the cringing
eye of night, driving it into a dusty
corner, there to huddle in the
shaded house at the end of earth's
street, behind blinded windows none
are ever able to peer through. Like
the house where the young girl
with blond hair lives, rides her
pink bike, but never far from her
father's trapping eyes, and she
is not allowed to have friends
over for sleep-overs.
They walk, mother and son, into the
gas-station on the corner that never
sleeps. As he pays for a pack of menthol
cigarettes, he glances at them.
One giant-sized candy-bar goes up
a jacket sleeve, another into the
torn pocket of over-sized, faded
blue-jeans. As he finishes paying the
pimple-faced clerk, he thinks, good, take
what you need, because, "ya can't
always get what ya want..." At
least that's what he remembers Mick
wailing since he was a kid. He watched
them, thought about the time he lived in
a van for a month once. How at night, he
listened to his wife attempt to cry
silently, as she wondered if their children
were crying also, having been startled at
night by a dream and found them not there,
found only a strange room, sad, lost
memories, at a friends house, where
there had been room for their children
but not them, and they understood,
though their children did not. As they
leave, he follows, almost speaks, then
thinks, that for that month,
they spoke only to feel alive, and
at times found themselves wondering why.
© 2002 Michael Ladanyi
