“I just have to hear this one song
before I leave.” Dawn says to me over the phone. My glasses are still in the
upper hand pocket of my shirt. My side burns are beginning to ski down the
perimeter ledge of my face like follicle peninsulas. I squint into the mirror
intuiting the smudged blur of my reflection. Fifteen tears on this planet. A
quarter to adulthood and nearsighted and everything I have ever wanted ahead of
me in life.
“What song is that?” I inquire.
“Jesus Built My Hotrod. Ministry.”
She says, still multitasking. Still scattering the tips of her fingers across
the counter of her bathroom in the north side of town. Applying slight lavender
galactic nebulas of rogue and eyeliner
and mascera. Blinking into her reflection in her own mirror. It is Dec1992. A week earlier father was out of the front lip of our porch at
four-thirty in the morning, releasing the yellow straps of Newspapers, placing
the inserts between the pages and the papers in the bag. We don’t use
rubberbands, but instead, we fold the paper like a dish towel and slide it in
the screen doors of houses on the west bluff, that way the customer does not
have to worry about braving the elements or strutting outside in their
underwear to hunt down an inky-rolled telescopic shaped bulletin in the early
am frost of autumn, they can merely just unlock their inside door and receive
an inky welcome matt to the current stasis of the world.
“They even took my cigarettes,”
Dawn Michelle says, “I mean…” She continues to blather. I am fifteen years old
and near sighted and have never smoked. I do not wear my glasses in public
because girls notice me when they are off. Dawn is applying make-up, what she
was doing last summer when I met her at Peoria Players, before I went on stage.
I try to tell her about my girlfriend Renae. I want to tell her about slapping
astringent cologne on my cheeks and the feeling of Friday nights and the way
the pending autumnal sun melts into the west, painting the overhead blue meadow
of night sky in little crimson and orange stipples. I want to tell her all
this. I want to tell her the way that thanksgiving opens something up inside of
me, a fresh yolk of gratitude in my chest, slowly dripping down into the
interior coating of my stomach, feeling my entire anatomy sprout in vectors I never fathomed possible.
I want to tell her about the Young Columbus contest and how I have somehow been nominated again this year and how I am working on my speech nonstop and how, out of all the erratic craziness I might have a chance to win..
"I have to go." Dawn tells me, before I have a chance to tell her anything.
Before I have a chance to say goodbye.
I want to tell her about the Young Columbus contest and how I have somehow been nominated again this year and how I am working on my speech nonstop and how, out of all the erratic craziness I might have a chance to win..
"I have to go." Dawn tells me, before I have a chance to tell her anything.
Before I have a chance to say goodbye.