to say it's nothing, really

Clouds tumbled overhead, an ash avalanche, a silent disaster film, while she, the money-counter, stationed herself bedside, gazing upon the ones, fives, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds arranged on the comforter, catching dull the morning light like eyes of dead children arranged before the killer. Her husband made noise in the kitchen: microwave beeping, plates knocking. She knew he hungered always for her fear and submission, but tomorrow she would serve him his death. She will pay the hitman tonight.

Starve

 
He's about nine, curly hair and brown skin, and I saw him climbing out of the creek with two small, pale fish on a line.

Wow!

It wasn't hard, he said, confident. I put the line in and they swam right to it.

Cicadas suffocated us in the heat. Man. What are you gonna do with them?

I don't know.

I had the impression he wished he had a better answer. But I thought, No, I get it. Perfect answer to a stupid question. Fishing was something to do. The fish are beside the point.

On a walk

Starts with the interloper's wedding march: the ceremonial song of unarticulated thought that accompanies one who ends each step by committing to the next. Music fades out.

You start train hopping, hoping to find one with a destination promising enough you can stand the ride.

Each lawn, a palm reading: each house, a face. I am a back turning.

Know in your life one journey full of meaning and longing, the meanest kind of longing, that is the wish to turn back when you cannot.

Traveling distracts from meaningless journeys. To move is to be in transition, in neither one place nor the next. When transition is not pleasant, that is because it is change.

Once, pacing the street in the dark a big man just home from work took a fighter's stance with a How's it goin'? to let you know he saw you without trusting. You ducked in reply, he chuckled to drop his hands which means you flinched.

More than once the sky slept in its own pinks and gray while you watched. More than once dark warmed like the day from lights cloaked in dining room curtains and the moment took on your singular reflection.