too late to go home
So the moon and me, we’re walking home, right. It’s about one o’clock in the a.m. or
one thirty maybe. There’s a sassafras twig in my mouth that I’m chewing on. I’ve got
spring coursing through my veins; this one girl is on my brain. The shadows smell of
sex. I cross Amorsend Street with the dogwoods in full bloom overhead. A Cadillac
slams on its brakes, but plows into me anyway, and I go down hard. As the blackness
rolls in with the speed of a cigarette, and the blood rushes out of my forehead, all I can
hear is a soft and slow drummer playing a distant jazz fill. The moon turns a corner
and goes on home without me, drinks some hot milk and honey before toddling off to
bed. The rain dances across my stiffening body in the next hour, washes me baptismclean.
As the bars downtown flush their patients out at closing time, the moon snores
loudly and rolls over in stained sheets. The Cadillac, seventy three miles out of town
and heading west, is ringing with a country song of two timing bastards, broken
women, and the massaging hands of Jesus.
- Ian Rhodewalt