Pool_2

The only escape was laughter. The laughter of doom and strain. It was Rocky, who made us laugh when laughter was all we could afford. The single emotion to survive when all the rest were consumed.

His name was Doctor Rockwell, and those were troubled times.

Our world twisted in violent rage, flamed to the torches of mobs pressing themselves upon the vicious liquid summer asphalt. Dark forces by day, radiant by night in the dazzle of Molotov cocktails. Following this parade of madness, we were the brooms. The dazed, the bloodied, the beaten looked to us for sensitivity, but we could barely feel. We were so, so, tired. Tired and empty. Empty and hungry, hunger yet another continuum of dismal void among the many. It is possible to be too tired to even feel your own hunger, let alone sympathy. Mayhem and injury relentlessly left us numb.

You had to dismiss it all to survive.

Abstraction and denial propped us through the trudge of torn flesh spiced with broken glass, hearts gone bad, and battered bones. Reflection yielded to reflex.