Pink jukebox spins an array of psychedelic tunes in a diner on the wrong side of the desert where the crows dance and bow and she wipes away the sweat from her frosted brow. She thinks it’s cold outside. Cold in the desert. What does she know? It can get cold in the desert. There’s wild wind and snow on those blankets of dirt. And then I don’t like to hear what she says. Toilet breath. Busted lip. Motorcycle up her crotch. Says she’s going to shoot the place up. For what? The demise of manners. She eats fierce cinnamon flavored chewy candies. Shouts something in German. I think she’s a Mad Max type. All hyped up on jolly rogers and gasoline fumes. She pulls out her cell phone and starts taking pictures of the diner. Says she wants to have something to remember it by before she burns it down. Shoot it up? Burn it down? Which is it going to be? Why not just come inside for a nice piece of pie.

Then a lemon-yellow sun setting. A feeling of void. I keep stopping. The white woman climbs into a gunmetal-gray submarine in the harbor and dives to a new destiny. The tourists are dumb and laughing. The ice cream shop across the street is a memory machine. Yellow light, mirrors, tight booths, the smell of candy, the smell of sweet, the small glasses of water. There’s too much time to undo, unwrap, unravel. The monorail, a life derailed. I recall the charming neighborhoods. Stuck in time, just a boy, wearing a brown tweed coat with a cap and eyes squinting by the angle of the sun. There’s a driveway and a covered porch, the brownish-pink house. I remember standing by the fireplace and reaching my hand in to touch the flames and it never burned. Not me. What am I?

What am I going to do today? The unanswered question. My vessel is empty. My soul doesn’t care. Love is questionable. Memories keep popping. I wonder if I should shave. I’m a tangled mess, a negative blessing of the head. An aqua-blue heart thump. The thought of the hours and how I will fill them. It never used to be like this. Being afraid of time even as it slips away with each blink of the eyes, with each beat of the heart. The birds keep singing, the breeze rolls in through the open windows. The teeth are breaking; the limbs keep locking up. I am fighting my own wishes and dreams, and I don’t want to. I want to be set free.

By

Aaron Echoes August