Broken Blue

1

My sandpaper, filmy lips ached to kiss the deteriorating edges of the apartment house in the rear view mirror. Each framed window weeped with the crippling remains of the chivalry daffodils, folded like a curtain in the wee hours of the moonlight, the shadows tipping their petals with the slightest hint of nostalgia. I could almost picture the last dew drop of a petal heaving a last, drifting sigh before swelling with death and sinking to the chipped side walk. Maybe it wasn't much of a place you'd call a home, but for me, it made do.

Although my fingers drizzled with the silk rain droplets, I didn't retreat my palms from the breezed window. I didn't want the rush of early autumn air to cease. I needed to feel the life of this town one last time before whispering hushed goodbyes that will long be forgotten years from now. The moon will have heard my reminiscences, so I supposed that it would become a secret with the moon and I. He will remember my whispers and I will remember how the light would shine so heavily against the roof above my room when I'd lay upon the falling shingles. But if the moon would forget my words, who would remember them?

It was then that I desired to fill my thoughts within the dullest of the stars, just so one day when someone pulls them from the treacherous sky, they will hear my songs of goodbye. Was it too much to ask for, you suppose? To let the moon rot away and leave the darkness among the hollow tenderness of the bright objects. Selfish, my mother had always whispered in my ear of the nights when I was much younger than now. Selfish, that the world could love someone who loves someone else more.

I had never really understood what she meant by that. How could I love someone more? But at this moment, as the beat-up Camry my mother has owned for too many years to count sped down the orange, marange city lights, did I truly understand just what she intended me to.

"I'll see you around," the wind tosses my hair like a tree branch in the winter's night storm as I whisper my goodbyes. The whooshing of the night air wafting and smashing against the plastic glass of the car window drowned all of my words in the abyss of forgotten. The taste of filmy plastic, mixed with heavy gasoline lingered on my tongue. It was almost the signature of the city -- besides, maybe I wouldn't miss it.

The patterned drizzle beating on the hood of the Camry was a soothing lullaby aching to tame my frizzy, sepia curls, which cried for a hairbrush.

However, it was my mother who spoke before I had even considered, and she broke the obvious, deafening silence between us.

"Please give Chicago a chance, Gail."

Give Chicago a chance? A place not even remotely similar to Denver, granted probably an upgrade from the place we lived in before, but not where I needed to be.

Was it selfish of me to rather be perched on the roof of our shithole house, dangling the bridge of my sangria Vans beyond the structures of broken shed houses? Maybe I could fill the grip of the greasy alcohol bottle, dripping with palm sweat and memories as I toss the empty poison to the wolves beyond out field. Was it selfish to need that?

Broken alcohol bottles littered the sidelines of the patterned city walkway, abandoned long ago by anyone who had cared to clean the place up. I knew that one day that would be me, tossing the filmy poison from a car window as I speed along, tossing mix tapes together with all of my friends here in Denver, avoiding the police who would chase us down the interstate. Validation. That's what I wanted. That's the life I need to have. Maybe I could've lit a Winston, tossing my braided pigtails to the side of the window while I shout from the angles of Denver that I was Gale Althea, and I was sure as hell alive.

Vacant lots with beaten remainders of car hoods were positioned in the middle of the darkness just so it was the perfect spot to vandalize, the perfect condition to drive downtown and never look back. You could probably shout for miles and you'd simply blend in with the city music of grinding graters and overran sirens. It wasn't like anyone in this side of Denver cared what you did, most just woke up every morning to speed to their work and slumber on to the apartment complexes later that night to cheat on their significant others. They'd clutch a drastic, but ceramic wrapped Givinchi bottle of wine, with a sadistic smirk blinding their eyes because they knew what they were doing. They knew that it was what was utterly wrong. But they never cared. No one did here.