I was high, really heady high. I couldn't talk so I went sat on bench by the rail in this little park kind of kitty corner from the first Bigbucks ever. I was happy I'd worn a thick hoodie cause it was cold. My back was to the water. I watched Mongo and Dwight talking on the side walk, silhoutted by dim streetlights. I could hear everything they were saying but I didn't understand a word. I just watched their hot breath rise and dissapate above their heads. I kept thinking, your breath is making the night--it's making the night. Then I heard keyboards, for real. I don't know where they were coming from, just out in the distance but not too far away. It was major key melodic, 8 bit Nintendo, shoegazer soundtrack, no seriuosly I want to be happy, music. I couldn't help thinking about all the impossbily cute dark haired, light eyed, white girls with bird tattoos and cat glasses that I would see all over back in Portland. How do I meet her? She's just a stereotype. She's got pictures of unicorns on her wall, better taste in music, and an art degree. When's she gonna exchange those blacks and greys for colors?
I'd sat this bench before, years before with Katie during a swan song trip to the Pacific Nortwest filled with silent fights and distant, hatbitual sex. I took pictures of her half sitting on the bronze pig statue in front of the fish throwers. With skyward green eyes, she held one hand out to the side and the other over her mouth like she was embarassed. She looked small and sweet in her blue 80s ski jacket and maroon stocking cap with random wisps of blonde hair darting out.
Then the music stopped and I noticed that I was alone stairing at the totem pole in the middle of the park.
"What this here earlier?"