The night is dark
Lit only by the stars and a single streetlight
A short stout man stumbles down the deserted road
He stops under the light and puts a cigarette to his lips
He takes a long drag, enjoying the silence
“Got a light?”
The man turns to a figure beyond the light’s reach
He steps forward, arm outstretched
The flickering flame reveals a woman
Beautiful, long dark hair shuffling in a light breeze
“You found me,” she says plainly, “so what do you want?”
The man stops to think
“I want... someone” he finally says
Smoke billows from her nose “Someone? You came all this way, for ‘someone?’
You know the cost?”
He nods
The woman sighs, exhaling smoke
When the cloud clears she’s gone
The man goes home
Someone is waiting

Science says
“You need 9 or more hours of sleep a night
To stay healthy,
Refreshed,
Happy,
And acute”

School says
“**** it! Start at 8:00 AM!
Run for 7 hours!
Give ‘em another 3 hours of homework a class!
They can take it!
Who needs sleep?
Who needs friends?”

We say
“**** it! Who needs sleep? Who needs homework?
We need to be experiencing life!
We need to figure out who we are!
Figure out what we want to do with our lives!
We need to explore our minds!
We need to find out how to deal with emotions!
We need to know how to be mentally stable
And how to prepare for life!”

School says
“*******!
You’ll learn how to be depressed,
Sleep deprived,
Automatons!
You’ll learn how Shakespeare wrote great plays!
You won’t read any though,
You’ll be too busy solving math you’ll never use!
No time for that though!
You’ll need to know in life that atoms have rings
These rings have electr—
What’s that?
Oh! Time to learn how to buy a home!
Just kidding! Taxes? Ha! Won’t need ‘em!
Here, take a test on things you didn’t learn!
You failed?
That means you ****!”

We moan, groan, complaining about how we have no time
“We want sleep!
We want lives!
We want to see the world!”

“Well *******!”

He sits alone at a bar
People swirl around him
The only conversation he has is ordering another
He stands to leave
As he walks to the door the bartender asks
“Same time tomorrow?”
“Yeah Leo. Tomorrow”
His voice heavy with sadness

He drives
Faster and faster
would anyone miss me?
a singular thought passing through
Over and over as streetlights pass above
would anyone miss me?
His foot presses down
He closes his eyes
would anyone miss me?
He lets go of the wheel
As he lays motionless inside the car his journal opens
*would anyone miss me?

Everyday he passes by her door
Never gaining the courage to knock
The name on the mailbox-
C. Angeles-
Left him with a smile
But everyday when he passed, he saw her
Long hair billowing,
Smile intoxicating,
Eyes laughing
He realized he never had a chance

Everyday the same boy walked past her gate
Jet black hair,
Eyes the color of the sea,
Lips like a rose
Notes he dropped named him J. Lawrs
Everyday when he stopped
She waived, but he never saw

He sits alone in the living room
Flipping through books from his childhood
And sees her
Angeles
He used to pass by her everyday
Thought she was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen
A scrap from a newspaper falls out
It rests on his shoe
“Christin Angeles- Dead at 29 from accident”
A note scrawled beneath
“Next time, don’t wait.”

His wife enters the room
Looking over his shoulder she says
“Who was that?”
“Someone I wished I’d talked to”

He sat at the bar
She sat next to him
They talked and drank till closing
He asked her back to his place
She declined and took a cab home

The next night he sat at the bar
She walked in
They had a laugh and a drink
He asked her back to his place
She declined and took a cab home

The next night she walked in
And he was gone
She asked if the bartender had seen him
He said “not tonight”
She had a drink and waited
After an hour he hadn’t shown up
She took a cab home
A man was sitting on her porch
A bouquet of roses drooped in his hand

“How did you know where I lived?”
“You took a cab” he explains
“When you told him your address
I wrote it down
Because there’s no way in hell I’ll let you,
The prettiest woman,
Walk away without trying
So here I am,
Dinner?”
He held out his hand
She took it and pulled him inside

A purple house sits on the corner
A tree grows from the back yard
A grey trimmed porch wraps around
The bright golden mailbox full of mail
A deep blue door like a portal to the stars
The driveway where her car sits with popped tires
She approaches the house
The steps still cracked from where he fell
As the police tackled him
She opens the door still scratched from
When he had came at her with the
So she threw the lamp
Walking around she runs her hands along the walls
Where he pinned her while she tried to run
The couch in the middle of the room
Still soaked with blood where she clawed him
Tears streaming down her face
Down the hallway
Where holes in the wall marked where he tried to stab her
To the bedroom where he tried to smother her
For the pain had grown too much

Those three words were all Grampa said to him
As the classic car glided down the road
Grampa looked over at his 5 year old boy
And motioned for him to sit on his lap
“Spirit’s what you need in this world kid
Otherwise you’ll crumble faster than a paper in the rain”
The kid took the wheel, driving faster and faster

Eleven years later
Grampa gave him a box
“Take good care of her
And remember, keep your spirit”
That night Grampa welcomed the icy grip of death

On his gravestone were the words
Spirit’s all you need to survive, keep it safe
Resting on top were photos
The car driving down the same road
The boy behind the wheel growing into a man

Eleven years later
The man drove to the cemetery
Tears streaming down his face
“She left me, Grampa
And I know I only need spirit
But I need you more
I need you to tell me that it okay
That I don’t need her
I need you to tell me what to do”
He sat there crying over his Grampa’s grave

He drove home
To the house in the middle of nowhere
The house his Grampa built
Sitting empty save a few boxes
He climbed the wooden ladder to his treehouse
He sat with a picture of his kind faced Grampa
Tears streaking his cheeks
He walks over to the chest he kept his toys in when he was a boy
Digging out old cars
Army men
And yo-yos
Till he reached the bottom
His toys surrounding him he noticed something
The chest had a fake board in the bottom

He pulled it up to find a note etched into it
I won’t always be there for you
But know this
It will all be fine in the end
Keep your spirit, for that is all you need
I love you
He climbed out
Got in the classic car
And drove
Hoping someday it would all work out