Crossing the Mediterranean
I don’t know why I left with a stranger that night— smoking a hash cigarette in the middle of the street, tripping on loose bricks. Everything felt off, like the end of an acid trip when your furniture looks like it’s been moved two inches to the left. Maybe it was the Mediterranean Sea, the sun’s refusal to set over it. Or the gnarled little dog I found near the highway in Morocco. I couldn’t take him home with me so I sat there cradling him, tears falling like a sunset, my dress turning black. And when the night was woolen, thick with hash and lack of sleep I think I just wanted to let someone hold me for a while.
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Pleasure
Nick says that we’re inherently selfish
but he buys the homeless man dinner. I wonder
if we do these things just to feel pleasure.
I do it to forget the time I hit a rabbit with my car
and kept driving, saw it split to pieces in the rear
view mirror. The time I left a date and went straight
to another. I watch people in traffic stop to help
others, the boy who sells roses on the freeway
exit sells out of flowers, a sign tied to a fence tells
me I’m loved but the homeless man grabs
my hand and puts it to his heart—says it’s not beating
because of the chip in his arm.
Photo credit: Taylor Vinton