Today I found a message in a bottle. It was wrapped in green and gray and tumbled down the wayside into approaching traffic. It was a burden along the hot tar; people watch from the sides of their glasses in hopes of hearing the satisfying crunch of it under wheels. They don’t know what I know.
I chase it down a rolling half block of roadside apartment buildings; nobody leaves their sets to inquire about the chatter of plastic down pavement. I keep up with a quiet pace of a drunk following his mistress home.
My hands are in my pockets as I see the opalescent bottle finally break into a rest upon the lip of a storm drain. I jog.
Now a hundred doors seem to open around me. Every piercing eye catches my limbs flailing in a running dance. A woman lugging an oxygen tank rears upon me with her morning paper in hand, startled by my fretful breaths. I ponder a hit from her tank…
I stop in the field of people, hands on my knees, my goal just out of sight.
Folks stand with jaws agape and eyes fixed, I’m paralyzed like in a dream. I see through open doors into homes and into lives. I realize that there will be no antiques left in the coming centuries aside from movie posters and photo albums. Photo albums that we buy of dead families to scour the past for what we are missing in the present. A timeless hobby.
I recollect myself and stalk the bottle like a curious cat. That bottle of opal green and gray with a hint of effervescent fluid and of which I am certain contains a message. I imagine these old fools are cheering me on. I grab its soft neck and twist like the murderer of chickens…
“Please play again.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment