Michigan hardens tonight, leaving me to starve under a harvest moon.
The corn is ripe and ready for the reaping. Bounty fills these flyover fields still strange to me, though at first glance, they were eerily familiar. The new land of plenty and promise; opportunity and advancement. Flourishing and thriving in the nurturing warmth of sharp Spartan sunshine.
But things are always different at night.
When the streets are deserted. Save for the pinball shuffling of urban zombies caught juggling their burdens. Be it addiction. Or homelessness. Or even mental illness.
I hand out smokes like a malignant Johnny Rotten Appleseed. And I’m happy to help keep the cravings of strangers away. Because I know what it is to do without. Or what it is like to gun a few in place of a more nourishing dinner. Simply because it is the only appetizing choice.
Traffic and blaring horns gradually abate. The scream of imported bikes foolishly pushed to their limits–that reeeeeing sound that has never impressed anyone– finally cease as the clubs and bars close their scenes.
Time to stumble home, fool. Drunk, broke, and alone–an all too familiar unholy Trinity.
Shadows stretch out like cats under streetlights. Up above the light pollution, planets are literally aligning tonight. My phone blinked that information at me earlier. But I am hesitant to trust anything it tells me these days.
So I swiped it away.
Someday, something…or someone…is going to inevitably swipe me away, too.
And I think that’s kind of funny.
Because then I’ll just be another shadow, shakily illuminated under the glow of that harvest moon.
