Sunday, January 20, 2013

today

While being ferried around tourist style to somewhere that I didn't want to go, I saw a street boy. He came up to the car window with a dirty rag to his mouth, which meant he was high on gasoline or glue. He tried a flip and fell on his back. It took him a minute to get up. Then he dislocated his shoulders in a grotesque plea. He put his face right against my window, shielding his eyes with his hand (was just tall enough to see in). I bent to mirror him, our expressions separated by a pane of glass and a short lifetime of experience: his small blank eyes, my ambivalent tears. We held our gaze and he flicked a smile that I could not decode. Waseem and Carmen in the car, tried to get my attention and spanish Agnes said "leave her alone". 

I feel like a water balloon, filling slowly for weeks, and suddenly pricked by two glassy brown pins.

xo

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