#prosetext

gravel digging trenches in the soft skin of bad knees, gasps like gunshots in the hollow air. intricate southern rituals sound from the valley, while the boy with no tears crashes into the man who yearns. the intoxicating thrill of abandoning reason and placing all bets on the stupid horse. the sobering comedown of the next morning dulled by ancient herbs. ‚you kiss me like you actually mean to‘ and the boy does, but the subjectivity of what a fact can mean to each individual stabs his bruised body with the cold steel of impossible implications. the uneven slope of their contrasting dreams is icy and spiked with false hopes, its foot lined with barbed wire powerful enough to sever a grown man’s jugular. to hear is not to understand and the boy bends his body under the touch of the man’s longing hand until it gives. pieces scatter on the gravel tracks. an aftermath lined with latex signposts of a union that, in the end, was nothing but a gasp in the cold, dead night of the southern countryside.