Inside an empty room, an old style telephone, complete with rotary dialer and tones unheard today, idly sits on a small stand often reserved for personal belongings: Sunglasses, keys, mailed advertisements. Idle until the ringing sound begins. One long sound after another, that same sound again and again, staining the absurd white of the surrounding walls. Ah, tonight! It could have been the night, if only...Somehow there is always an "If only," a "Could have been." Tonight, if only someone was here, inside, to put a stop to the monotony of the tireless mailings and the uncompromising ringing noises. These old telephones they used to ring but the junk mail still collects, all on idle stands surrounded by walls of different whites, none the same as any other.
nostalgia
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Among the skinny trees one stands out for no reason whatsoever. Neither as wide nor as tall as its siblings and mates, it extends from the picturesque forest floor, sprints toward an azure sky, stopping just short. One of the last winds of Autumn (is this the last wind of Autumn?) swirls about reluctant to put itself to bed; working to outlast the season like children on bicycles in middle September at dusk as the sun sets a bit earlier. If the sun even sets at all.
Booth Scene, on a Thursday
Laughter, sustained, hangs stale in the air about the cushioned corner booth like curtains of left behind cigarette smoke from way back, when time was different; like some forgotten acquaintance, seen in the wrong place at the wrong time. A casual wind carries leaves, trash, newspapers, and voices from the past, brushing aside this haze while bringing specks of an old earth, time forgotten. Time more likely unknown to those staring, swiping litter and leaves with casual shoes. Desultory movement, slowly searching empty skies, streets, Thursday scenes and other conversations for anything to happen next.
Arbitrary Summer Minutes
On that summer day we experienced all the four seasons, but never at once. This tends to happen in Northeast Ohio. In a different summer, our porch was painted a sort of light blue; A shade of blue the sky can assume upon the perfect alignment of all universal force imaginable. Yet, in some places that paint began to fade; it peeled in others. Four of us sat: One on the swing attached by chains to the ceiling, Another on the Adirondack chair back in the corner. Two more on marble slabs, forming corners of the rectangle. Wrought iron railings, painted black, so smooth they coulda been God himself, The Devil, maybe even Death, that most rogue agent. The approaching storm gathered quickly from afar. Electric space, all around us, closed in upon our tranquility. Then a flash, contact too close for our comfort… Simultaneously we became surprised, inched ourselves backward away from the storm greeting us at our literal doorstep, each of us doing so without knowing the others would too. So it rains, there's wind, thunder and lightning; we sit and watch, hopeful for total obliteration. Of course, it never happens. Silently fallen twigs down the (gratefully) we race newly formed rapids that collected in our street's storm alley.
