away

I fold the pillow in half, finding a cool side once hidden, finding some solace in the drowse. Not much happens where I wander. The little details tend to expand, the silence never much opposition, meaning never even a bother. Toss and turn, daze and dream, work and those moments waiting for work to begin. The freeway prison and the locked door liberties. When I wake up, the mystery is all but missing.

I step into the middle, the night suddenly hectic and bizarre. A battered man wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a hospital gown pan handling in a gas station. He smelled of puke and old booze, a hard and grizzled fifty-something digging through the trash. Scarred and dizzy, he took me up on an offered ride, but had nowhere to go but away. Away was good enough.

The days lump and crawl. I played ping pong with a kid with gouged wrists and a nickel sized burn on his arm. I took another couple of kids to a park where they chased frogs and seemed younger than their thirteen years. I played rummy, I played Monopoly, I made kids buck and shout. A child talks to his mother on the phone and goes into his room and cries. Horror stories walk the halls, rubbing elbows with chores and dinner. Muffled tears and nightmares. Hours dowsed in dim dissembling. I sleep so sweetly, huddled against this wrecked and wasteful world.