san antonio- excerpt

An excerpt from a bigger piece. Feedback is welcome, so be mean, be harsh, rip it apart.

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I get up and I run.

Passing street lights and letting the red brick followed by grey cement, strings of graffiti and red brick again pass by in a blur. Ducking under rusted pipes and slipping down behind a garbage can I still hear their black leather foot steps. I still see the long beams of light. These are the motions that mean hiding in the dark again, these are the sounds that mean trying not to breathe, and I'm falling back through firing synapses to the days of village life in the Texas country side. Southern accents and the masculine voices of pregnant female smokers are the first things I hear.

"Daddy's home."

Look for a way to exist anywhere but here.

"Dinner's on."

Set the stage for tonight's meal with your shaking hands.

If you can smell liquor when he opens the door you can relate to the deer, frozen victim of headlight freeze-rays. "I want you to open this," it was a bottle of something brown that smelled like no sleep. His incompetent hands almost dropped a shaking bottle of carbonic acid.

I stood in my corner. I waited for an hour, two hours, three, and then it began like a rerun of my least favorite organ song. Breathe in and exhale ordered noise. "Bring me another."

"Jus'a sec."

"Bring me another."

"Jus'a sec."

That could've been the best conversation I've ever had with my father, I felt my feet leaving behind red, running across broken glass that I'd thrown down. I'm yelling just as loud as my tiny lungs will allow.

"I'm sick and ******* tired of this ****!"

That wasn't me, my noise was shrill and nonsensical. The pattern of sounds that means annoyance came from pa, I'm making the sounds that mean crying and letting saline roll down my cheeks.

When the sun rose and bleached the horror of last night we went to church. I sat in the front row, next to mom and dad; I listen to the words of god with full attention, wide eyes, and tightly closed mouth.
John tossed golden California hair back and met my gaze with a half smile of cocky apathy from across the room and between ironwood pews. We planned to go somewhere quiet later, it would be as fun as it was uncomfortable, we wanted to sit by the endless lake and pretend to fish. Eventually hands would worm their way to shoulders, stalking fingers would meet and we'd just sit and stare into the bluest lake we'd ever see.

Given enough time someone always says something they shouldn't. It might have been John, but it was probably me. I am the luckiest person in the world, I played slots a billion times and the whirling bars finally came up ?'winner.' There are an almost infinite combination of genes, or people, and the ones that don't occur never get to sit on the lake side, listen to the gathering plaid storm trample flowers, grass and young trees. They'll never get to hear the shouts and the solemn grumbling as a troop of country folk get ready to do their duty. I'm certain they'd want to though.

I can't help but wonder at how many rocks every man and woman, in every small town will throw. Cut along the dotted line and reveal the void behind me. Use your calloused hands. The saliva, sweat and blood-shot excitement poured down their faces, I looked into the darkest prehistory in those black eyes.

Just pick up a stone, light enough to throw, but heavy enough to hurt. Perfect.

The earth takes back. Nature won't save your soul, but she's the only one that could. She just screams, in the storms, floods and every bird song, "throw your stones."

Pile them at my feet.

They tore holes in the planet to tear holes in me and they did it slow like ceremony. Made me bleed cherry and rose. I stared up into blinding sunflower and saw the stars fall. I fell with them to the horse-**** covered ground and remembered that grass stains. When tiny meteors bring you down and your people remove you, when they hit the delete key and watch as the passage relating is eaten by a blinking cursor, you'll cry too. The rocks kept falling with my free-flowing saline. There's a one in five billion chance you'll die from meteor related injuries.

Between cataclysmic odds-breaking impacts I got up and I ran.

I ran until my lungs burned and my feet ached. The birds whistled folk song tunes to the beat of a setting Texas sun while waves of sand born heat rose up and distorted everything from me to the edge of a well lit city. A looming green sign bellowed, "Welcome to San Antonio."