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It’s been a long night already. It has been five nights in three hours and all I have are these flashes, these bursts of what it was. It’s too quiet now outside. I am gazing out onto these deserted streets a stranger suddenly, made so by these wounds I have imbedded in me now.
Tan palms reaching, my rented dvd’s scattering, the dog… where is she? Where did she go? WHERE IS SHE????
I went down hard, I remember that much. I’m remembering more but it is filtered though the broken tempered glass of a passenger window.
I’ve a broken toe, stitches in my hip, the gathering clots of blood from broken veins spreading fat fingers upon my thighs.
I see this screen from eyes that are blurred by drugs. What kind? Natural or synthetic I am not sure.
I have got to show you my neighborhood and I will explain the walk. Do you know this is what I have to say? I’ve got to smoke. I gave it up but my lips are swelling for the smoke. Where was I?
I walk the dog every night. This is my routine. I don’t break it much. Perhaps I go to my mother’s and she gives me dinner after we share the walk. Sometimes I find the dog a friend and visit with their owners. I run around in a park if I can but that doesn’t really happen much anymore. Not since I have failed to find a companion to share that with. But that’s the drugs talking. I don’t deviate. Much. Tonight I did. I had to return low B-grade movies. I have done this before. Once. There is an area you can cut through and escape eyes, people in cars looking at your dog or your breasts, of which you never know. If you want to shake your hips to a tune they are always turning a corner, putting on their brakes and stopping but there is this short-cut to the video store, a path where they can’t see me.
My eyes are oozing. I should lay down but I can’t, I don’t think I can even move to turn on the light. I use this screen to see the keyboard. My legs don’t want to budge and there is a numbness in my toes. I really don’t care. I can’t feel anything but the images anymore. Nothing but the square light on my retinas burning what has been altered by experience.
Iron rails. I fell against them but I rolled, exhaling like I was taught so that my body wasn’t a solid, uncompromising weight hitting the ground and bouncing, not absorbing the shock but a part of it. My hand went out to dissipate the impact. It was immediately grabbed.
Sure I saw him. Even if our eyes do not see our senses perk up like a seal to the movements of a shark. I see lots of young, fit black men as I walk. Many of them talk to me vying for my affections, a taste of my genetic difference, a moment of my sex. I am always polite but their game doesn’t appeal to me and I bow out quickly. But this one didn’t talk to me. He crossed the street and walked so far behind me I was certain of his loss as I slipped between the crack of the buildings to walk along the tracks and sneak in my groove as Def Leopard screamed at almost full volume into my ears.
I live in the hood I say to people. Some say they have seen/lived much worst and shrug off my minor embarrassment. Others cringe and wonder why, saying so or showing their distaste with their eyes. I am just happy to have a house.
The dog heard it before I did. I don’t know that I even heard it or if it was an interjection of what I was supposed to hear. I was oblivious but I know it was swift. I took the corner and it hit me, a man feeling of a thousand ton train, the ground meeting my face, my stomach filling with splinters from the wooden ties. Gravity and I becoming one.
It’s a cigarette I want now. I told them that when they were taking my statement so many hours ago, the sun not even setting in the glorious array of colors it has been showing off for Southern Cali of late. They kept looking at me strangely. What did I care? I will smoke through split lips if that is what I want. Stop staring I said.
She screamed and I snapped. Two years of judo, hours on the mat playing like I would never care. I heard the beast that lays dormant inside of me revolt and I reacted. I flipped beneath him and felt the blunt end of something heavy hit me. I gasped and managed to get my knee between us and then hooked my leg in one fluid movement against his hip and executed the scissor motion that had him flying off me and to the ground beside me.
I jumped up but he was on me again and I swept my leg against his and down we went but I had his arm and I locked his elbow. I heard my sensei telling me not to pull up on my opponents or I would dislocate their shoulder with the arm bar so I shoved forward as we struggled and I heard it go and now he was screaming.
Blind. The dirt in my eyes. Where is she? Where is my dog? Don’t think. I am slapped hard and my skin is burning somewhere but I can’t know where. Anger. One pint of adrenaline becomes two and two become six and suddenly it isn’t blood in me anymore but power as I have never felt. I hear a primal growl well up from my beaten body and I am strangling this human who has displaced me, attacked me unprovoked. I squeeze hard. I am no longer in my body. I am no longer feeling my hands or my heart or the darkening sky or the people as they run toward me. I am feeling life die beneath my fingers and I love it.
Stitches in my leg. Voices in my head. Rocks sticking out of my hand.
Where is she? I am sitting here waiting for her to return. I will wait all night. I will wait.
*This post was brought to you courtesy of the imagination of inushnu.