- Post By: Jason Santo
- Date:
- Category: Uncategorized
Barry said it over and over again as he stood before the hyper colors of the kids’ tags sprayed all over the white brick wall of the crymbling gym. I am a city. He looked up at the blue sky embrace and felt his fingers were like skyscrapers reaching for Heaven. I am a city! Barry moved his arms left and right as if conducting the symphony of rush hour and again he said it, almost in a whisper: I am a city. And he was. Barry was freedom and incarceration, routine and hookie. He heard car horns blaring in his ears and the rutting of lovestruck teenagers in his blood. Everything was alive except the kid, the one Barry used to score with before taking a couple year spin through county. Now he was out and he’d seen the kid that one time only a week ago. Or was it a month? He didn’t know. “I am a city,” he said again and he couldn’t be troubled with time because everyone’s moments were a simultaneous stream within his lungs, their worries stirring in his brachea into an everlasting exhale, a never ending tale that defied death. Joey there somewhere, grabbing those pills from Trevor as Barry watched. He was there too just as he was here with the bright colors on the wall and now Barry shook off that news, those blues, flinging clues like undigested booze. Fuck. He was going to miss the kid, so he kept playing it back over and over, Trevor giving him the whole bag of blues. As what? A gift? Barry wanted in but Joey said no, he’s taken this trip alone, and that’s cool. I am a city. I can see all anyhow from my window eyes down to my ocean soles. I can see you in the water. Barry spun, away from county and the city, his bloodstream and memory, he wanted to skin prison sins from his chest so he tore his shirt of and wailed at the street, rubbing himself against the hard, hot cement. I am the city! And he felt the heat of yesterday on him still, hot touch and cold bars, he wanted to break out and be free. He needed to be an ocean like Joey. He needed to be more than a city. Barry wanted to sink but he just kept getting higher and higher.