Hopeful

Justin stands smoking a cigarette (he's 8,) on the corner of Kemp and Kensington. He wears a tattered blue Adidas shirt, black jeans, the right leg ripped from knee to ankle, and sneakers 3 sizes too big. He picks up a medium size rock, weighs it in his hand with a slight jostle, he then turns toward the garage behind him and throws, as hard as he can, squarely hitting the one remaining window. He laughs with the sound of shattering glass. His mother and some man he just met this morning come out of the house next to him, mother shouting, man with beer in one hand, cigarette in the other.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" His mother yells.

Justin just stares at her.

"Get in this fucking house right now!"

On his way into the house he grabs the beer out of the mans hand, takes a long drink, and while returning it asks, "Hey man, can I have a cigarette?"

The man, nearly as tall as the door frame, tattoos peeking out from the edges of his clothes looks at the boy, then at the boys mother, she shrugs her shoulders. The man takes out his pack of Marlboro Reds, opens the top and tips two cigarettes into the boys waiting hand.

"Really, two?" Asks Justin.

As Justin walks into the house, toward his hovel-like room he holds back the tears welling up in his eyes. This is the nicest one who's come along, he thinks to himself, I hope he stays awhile.

Here it is again

That feeling of oblivion. The sense that something quick is at my heels, waiting for the moment I lessen my step. The dark corners creep ever closer. Something's got to give, and I'm not sure what it is; my soul perhaps, maybe my mind. Fuck. I have felt this dread so many times before, the first time I was 4; I thought that this feeling meant fire. Flames to engulf my life. It still manifests as fire, I thought I had come to terms though. Thought something within me had an understanding. Not the case. It seems the only reasonable thing to take the air out of me, my spirit, needs to be quelled, turned into something, something different, something dangerous, something that burns. I'm afraid of the dark these days, afraid of the things I can feel, but can't see. Afraid of the wind that brings me sounds of another world, one I have only one foot in. But where does that other foot reside? I feel but a shell, walking as if I belong, knowing I do not. I can't make sense of it anymore, the harder I reach, the further it retreats. Glass is beautiful, especially when shattered, fire can shatter glass. Chaos. Heat. Flame. Air. Hotter. Destroy. A cycle I no longer wish to engage in, no matter how familiar. When does the air run out so the fire will stop?