Sides of the Spectrum
The sights and sounds of emotion.
Read the last writing: THY CRUTCH.
What about a hit?
What about a hit of your love
Start to shake
Start to shake with your hand
She sits on the leather couch with stilt legs twisted over each other. On the coffee table is a glass jar with coffee that looks like a milkshake. She’s pairing the caffeine shake with a double chocolate muffin which, due to her inconsistent picking, has started to crumble on the wooden table top. Her eyes are bright. Moist. Wet with the beginnings of tears. The sun, through a wall of windows surrounding her, lands its shine on the water between eyelids.
The slow going fan above us gives a steady chill and before long I look at my arms to see the hairs pointed to the ceiling. I rub them, trying to find warmth and comfort but everything is frigid. It’s as if some metaphysical source of heat has been sucked through the door and is rushing further and further from us.
I’m in a chair to the side that half spins and I use that feature to distract from gnawing thoughts of false hope, doom, a signature on the line of Regret. I’m trying to keep all of these beliefs inside. I’m trying not to spoil someone else’s day.
Beside her is a good man.
He’s viceless - on the surface. A trait I’ve never trusted and one that I look at with eyes squinted. I always assume there’s a pile of skeletons hidden under the floorboards of the home of a man like this.
The best serial killers know to show a hint of public vice - smoking, drinking, degeneracy. Too squeaky clean and the reflection becomes bright, the actions glare in an onlookers face and those deeper habits are disguised under something more approved. His perfect skin glows in the sun much like her tear hinting eyes. His muffin is still intact without so much as a single crumb escaping.
Watching him watch her and watching myself at the same time wondering ‘what’s he thinking,’ while it’s likely he’s watching her wondering the same - what’s she thinking? Because appealing her, nodding in agreement with her has become just as important as water to him.
A loud cackle from a nearby table.
Two college aged girls in hoodies with hair pulled up point and laugh at something on the blonde ones screen. Their laugh is fingernail on chalk and they, unaware of this, roar their heads back to sing the song of the unencumbered even louder.
I pull my attention from their jokes. I turn back to the man and woman on the couch. I sigh. I look at my own shoes. I look at my own thoughts,
‘how wild is it, people are so close in physical proximity but their attitudes are a universe away.’
I take a sip of my coffee that the barista assaulted with honey and the liquid on lips gives me something to focus on.
One more glance to my right at the laughter, one more glance to my left at the longing and one last thought of, “oh to be human,” before I exhale all air in my body, melt in the chair and look up to the soft turning fan.
- Winston
Souled Idea
The Voodoo Child
