The Road Monologue

The drunkards go home, throwing beer bottles behind their left shoulders: alcohol stains spell out initials of people they used to love and the name of that casino down the road. This is how mornings begin in the city: knee, shoulder, and right knuckle skinned in half-hearted fights; fingertips hypothermic blue, just for show. The alleyways are filled with tired eyes and clusters of folded yellow flowers in unfeeling hands. Glass shatters like ocean waves, like my mind when time stopped ticking forward. We set our watches back by an hour, by two, by ten and a half.
Apartments rise against the skyline, scraping stars: shrouded in smoke and light pollution but most certainly there, watching as another bouquet of carnations is handed from mourner
The pauses between footsteps are silences like the rain, and the ice cream cones from yesterday, memories stifling the air. Airplanes throw themselves into clouds, and soon, we will be inside one, flying into space. We'll never be higher than our constellations, but we try. God help us, we try. The endurance of human hope has always been lost on the galaxy. The heavens look down on us in scorn.
The signs come in the form of helium balloons that we have let go as children, advertising cigarettes and alcohol, candy-coated letters and poison, and won't you come to me and drown yourself in something you don't understand? Hangovers and fog lie heavy on shoulders and rooftops, waiting on bridges 'til they collapse. And yet, people hang on to what's left of hope, clutching car handles; their dreams long lost in the trail of gas fumes on the highway. We walk on in spite of this, wondering if we are too late for the train.
And this is what it comes down to in the end: baguette held tightly in its paper bag, while we stand on the platform, carnations scattered under our feet, waiting for headlights to blind us