Apr 2014
Hanes moves to New York a week after our meeting. I ask him why on the phone when he tells me.
"To get away from all this normalcy. I can feel it leaking into my pores like a hot honey. It drags me down...weighs me down. ****, I've lived out there before, I could probably do it again."
I tell him he'll be fine. He doesn't say anything, but I hear him nod into the receiver, knowing full well we both know being fine is worse than being suicidal. At least with that, there's some risk.
We hang up and I look out the window of my apartment. It's trash day and the sun is high up in the sky, glowing hot like a new light bulb. There's not even a wind in the air. The trees that stand behind the apartments across the street are still. They bring back an image I'd seen of 50 places to visit before you die. Four trees cast in black shadows with a backdrop of hot orange rock. The sun looked to be burning the hillside with its heat. There was no life, just rock, sand, and near to death bushes that looked more like piles of ash than shrubs. Wonder was not the first feeling I had when I saw the photograph; it was abandon.
Overflowing trash cans and driverless cars are the only things on the streets. Everyones at work. Gotta' make money somehow. My desk is spotted with empty coffee cops and half empty red wine bottles. Folded pieces of paper with squiggly black pens marks are jammed in between books I've been telling myself to read for months. My gaze slides back to my window and I wonder where all the drivers are to these empty cars. Somewhere else, I tell myself.
"To get away from all this normalcy. I can feel it leaking into my pores like a hot honey. It drags me down...weighs me down. ****, I've lived out there before, I could probably do it again."
I tell him he'll be fine. He doesn't say anything, but I hear him nod into the receiver, knowing full well we both know being fine is worse than being suicidal. At least with that, there's some risk.
We hang up and I look out the window of my apartment. It's trash day and the sun is high up in the sky, glowing hot like a new light bulb. There's not even a wind in the air. The trees that stand behind the apartments across the street are still. They bring back an image I'd seen of 50 places to visit before you die. Four trees cast in black shadows with a backdrop of hot orange rock. The sun looked to be burning the hillside with its heat. There was no life, just rock, sand, and near to death bushes that looked more like piles of ash than shrubs. Wonder was not the first feeling I had when I saw the photograph; it was abandon.
Overflowing trash cans and driverless cars are the only things on the streets. Everyones at work. Gotta' make money somehow. My desk is spotted with empty coffee cops and half empty red wine bottles. Folded pieces of paper with squiggly black pens marks are jammed in between books I've been telling myself to read for months. My gaze slides back to my window and I wonder where all the drivers are to these empty cars. Somewhere else, I tell myself.
