October #7

white legs flash
down the side of dark roads
"it gets so much darker out
when i'm at home
or maybe just earlier"
weapons held in both hands,
heavy blocks of wires,
communication,
entertainment -
the longer one runs,
the heavier and hotter they get,
these tokens,
pressed upon the runner
by roommate or boyfriend or mother.
white legs flash,
all alone,
dark roads.

Mini-Story

She's just a girl, walking back home, but as she walks she is plagued by how she watched him beckon to that other girl like a lover, to come in, and simultaneously shut her out. She tries to be angry, and can be, a little. They did leave her alone, after all, to walk back in the dark and in the cold. So she spits at the side of the road and tells the night,

“At least he's taking the right fuckin' steps, at least he's making me mad at him so this will be over sooner.” But then her voice softens, not to the point of tears, but definitely past the border of sadness, and she is quiet, and almost whispers -

“At least he was nice to me, in the car,” she talks to herself, keeping it a secret from that watchful night. And, “At least he seemed to care.”

She walks home in the darkness and the cold under the solemn sky, wrapped in her own thoughts. Under those merciless stars she is alone.