Pavement

I scuff my sneakers as I pass them
stumbling past like a sputtering car
I listen as they sputter words
words of repitition, decrepit and crumbling
crumbling like the sound on a broken record
a broken promise, a trust misplaced
misplaced keys to a deserted house
a deserted friendship
I have no friends, I have the night instead
the night which is filled with character and emptiness
I am a character witness to the murder of one
the one who sits on pavement in the night waiting.

Cigarette

She flicks her pen as if ashing a cigarette and leans back in her chair. Her hands grip at the armrests like she is preparing for impact and her mouth hangs open in a yawn. I'd like to turn off the volume right now and imagine that she is screaming. She's in an airplane, confined in a cheap plastic seat, three to five seconds from death; skyrocketing, plummeting toward earth. Her high-pitched screams are drowned out by the others around her, begging for some higher power to save their lives as the engines fail one by one. Eyes bulge and water; fingernails dig. The oxygen mask bursts out from above her straight black hair and dangles before her, occasionally smacking her in the face. I'd like to imagine that the last thing she thinks about, right before she hears crunching and shrieking of metal and is engulfed in a jet-fueled fire, is every single time she flicked her pen like she was ashing a cigarette.

Frozen

I wish that there was a better way to capture time then to merely scribble words on a page, because there are moments of time in which I feel so overwhelmed by emotion that it becomes indescribable in any language. It makes me remember the natural flaw in all of us: feeling. That feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize you have made a crucial mistake, or the shiver in your spine when you learn that someone you love has died. The agony of having your heart broken because she doesn't look at you like she looks at him. Knowing that your childhood is a long forgotten dream.
But it is the fleeting feeling of joy that keeps us going. Being congratulated or rewarded for working hard. Being told by someone that they care for you and love you. The butterflies in your stomach when you're nervous because she held your hand. Knowing that your childhood was a dream rather than a nightmare you can't wake up from.
It isn't the moments of time I want to capture. It's the feeling. At these moments of joy I don't want to stay at that place in time, I want to stay in that feeling. I want my hands to tremble and my heart to beat fast. I want my throat to close and my eyes to wince. I want to stay frozen in feeling.