Simon

In walks a beard in old, tattered clothes babbling about basketball and asking for the pipe: "Ya mind?" he says and picks up a lighter from the table, draws in a huge breath and, while exhaling, remarks: "The world is yours, man. You just have to believe in yourself." Minutes tick by as he tells detail after inane detail about stories that are too specific for anyone to relate to and all revolve around some vague, overarching theme to which he's alluded. Wanton in both focus and reaction, he hasn't finished talking when my roommate asks him to pass the piece. Slowly turning the knob and resistant to simple good-byes he steps out leaving us all wishing he'd stayed only a little longer.

Earthmovers

Machinery woke me up today. It didn't startle or jar me from some deep slumber; it slowly and painfully pulled me from sleep like a band-aid from a reluctant boy's knee. I looked outside and what was, a few short weeks ago, a house beside my apartment building is now a hole. They'd knocked it down already. That took about a day. Then they cleared the debris. That took about a day. Then they abandoned it for a couple of weeks, until today. Now a hole sits where a home once stood. It got me up, at least.

Waken

It was grey and I woke to the sound of car tires lifting water from the road like marine vessels tearing through the tide. Sticky notes pervaded my bedside table and clothes conquered the floor. Bob Dylan told me that God was on my side, and my roommate got high. And I, six days short of twenty-two, thought of Odysseus: away for so many years on the raging oceans, seeing new things and finding himself in situations of peril he'd not imagined before. And I, laying alone in my bed, thought of a girl I know.