The emotional river flees fluidly like me. There must be some kind of disabling plate in my head. A blockage, a barrier reef, a comatose scarecrow holding an eternal lamp in a Halloween field of moonlit night. Frosty crows soar across the face of the man in the moon. They cry for salvation, yet cruise for depravity.

What if this is some kind of progressive brain problem? What if my ability to create is slowly being erased? That’s a sobering thought. I feel myself lying in a field of pumpkins. A head full of straw. Thoughts are butchered mush. Eyes stare straight to the sky. I try counting stars but it’s impossible. The moon laughs at me.

Now along the water in sleepy small town Two Rivers. There stands a large stone church, and picnic tables in the grass. There’s the smell of hamburgers cooking on a charcoal grill. Sun hanging high, an orange yellow eye dangling in the sky. The hurt of the ancient mall. A city of rubble and rebar, tumbled and bent, dust, tombs, the walking dead.

Suddenly tired. Want to sit and watch and think. To escape within myself, within a foil of peace. I’m considering dream time tonight: a rose, a job, a night court, a crucified blow to the head. Something that pinches. Something to remind me that I am alive.

By

Aaron Echoes August