It isn’t often that life affords you the opportunity to stand at a literal crossroads.
But there I was.
A high-viz collar turned up against the darkness of Turner at my back. East Cesar Chavez stretching out beside me. Facing the curves of the planked river trail. The one skirting the spot where the fish are supposedly laddered around.
The song of water dancing over the dam filled the symphony of another Old Town night. And for once, I wanted to be safe in the sound of something. Because everything else has proven itself a whole lot of nothing. And the claustrophobic silence of that vacuum left a nervous fox drinking fidgeting.
To the west, orange barrels lined the bridge. Their rigidly spaced regularity paced across the brick and concrete span bending up over the Grand. The one currently being inconveniently patched and pattered, smoothed and reinvigorated.
The streetlights bore winking, low-beam witness; the grated steel railings proved an ineffective barrier between responsible consideration and more intrusive thoughts. Those dark whispers of malevolent impulse; those spiteful giggles of tragically tormented inner angels. The ultimate calls of action bellowed by my more damaging addictions.
A temporary sign blinked, thanking me for driving safely. Which I thought was fucking hilarious. Because I was standing still at that unfinished intersection. And that digital intrusion into my more analog world felt rudely targeted.
But maybe it was intended as a different kind of warning.
To the east, where abandoned tracks slice the road, sloped a familiar hill. One lined with the lineage of familiar haunts. Just more ghosts left lingering in the graveyard of our entanglements.
And they made me remember the hotness of that first 517 summer.
The corner stand chocolate malts — ordered with enough extra malt to choke a goat. The night we attempted yoga together, an activity I promptly renamed “Bendy Toots.” The initial pints at a dive bar tacked conveniently to the side of a pizza joint. How her hand felt in mine as we walked along the river; how her hair smelled when she rested her head on my shoulder after those malts got the better of her fragile digestion.
But the trespassing demons sought their moments in the limelight of memory, too.
Because that old fashioned blue collection box is still standing there. The one into which was ultimately mailed that original sin. The memories of heated arguments pinballed red down dirty brick alleyways. Hateful words spit out in anger echoed off all the cheerful murals.
Orphaned fragments of broken love were scattered all over that Old Town Friday night. The one spent first on tarmac rippling in the waves of unseasonable heat. And then later, wobbling under the influence of more numbing agents.
Not that those details even matter much.
Despite better intentions, the story never really deviated from outcomes plainly evident to everyone but the idealistic idiot hiding behind his typewriter.
Because I came up to Michigan to finally grow the fuck up. To help raise that family right, in a hurtful world so full of trust-funded wrongs. I wanted to build something beautiful from that anemic start of want. To cut my hands with the efforts of honest work. And not with the bite of more manic blades.
The irony is that after all that genuine investment, I am still just that lost and scared little boy. The ridiculous man-child out wandering Old Town streets unsupervised. Skulling sloppy pours; forever playing in traffic. And foolishly cavorting with all the other creatures of the night congregating down along that dirty river. Just so we can wordlessly discuss the fatal injustice of how all the time seems to be running out.
On a horizon twinkled with the stale lights of The City, familiar storms gathered. Old bones ached in anticipation of the upcoming suffering months. Terrible lies are unfolding.
I drifted unchecked to the broken familiarity of that crossroad; I stood alone, with the darkness of Turner at my back.
It was there I made yet another desperate deal, with yet another dangerous apparition.
I tried selling my soul for a pocketful of words.
But the Devil only laughed.
She said I would have to make it on my own.
