Postaday for January 26th: Free Association. Write down the first words that comes to mind when we say . . .
- home
- soil.
- rain.
Use those words in the title of your post.
There’s a smell in the air like cherry-flavored magnesium citrate, or maybe that’s the tequila on his breath. Last night was the last night he’d dedicate to doing the things he wouldn’t be doing anymore until he decides to do them again: liquor for his bowels in glass bottles with screw caps, pharmacy bought, chugged and chased with medicine for his head, a thirty dollar fifth for a sixth of his day. Thank god for math, thank god for four hours of darkness before dawn. The sun rises too damn early this time of year.
Clouds and trees argue in his peripheral vision and his sweat’s a thing for stinging his eyes back into focus. Blues in his ears, reds in nostrils, greens in his guts, yellows in his spine because old age is chasing him with fangless mandibles, incisors lost to the sweet decay of not finding laughter funny anymore.
Running three miles but call it half a ten K since he’s training for a 20 K which is half a marathon.
His woggling belly, his belly woggling, the way his belly woggles, the woggles in his belly. Aforementioned and never forgotten, a weight like the moon and his greasy innards an ocean that waxes his orbiting gut and wanes any hope of having ever been been young.
Mystery loves inconstancy and the clouds win, whip the trees, pelt the streets suddenly, sweetly. He cuts through a park to hide beneath the loser boughs, and as the sky penetrates the ground he shivers, longs for that easy chair, that tequila bottle, that ability to feel at home in his own body.