If anyone could, I might do it: reach backward and pull those faux-leather whip-fast seven A.M.s right out of me. Shred them to shadow or unmemory, scrape out those dregs like I always hoped he’d do for the footwell. Old receipts. Fast food bags. Empty Redbull cans. That Toyota always smelled like it, and like him, and cigarettes, and the way the seats cracked in the sun. Early morning. Southern California 60s chilly. Sometimes on the way to school he’d stop at Starbucks and buy us donuts, old-fashioned, that sour cream sort that sticks to the roof of your mouth. The radio going. CDs scratched up: country, rock n roll, stuff with the same punch that lives in him. A small range to prowl. I don’t want to call it angry music, because a raised voice can mean different things, but you get too used to it, right? The warnings? That little tick upward in volume? Loud. Angry. Maybe he thought them synonyms too. Chaparral hillsides, asphalt ground, sandals and bare legs and skinned knees and desert, and the smell of Redbull, and the schoolyard—and, behind, the car speakers crowing a woman’s voice, violence against violation. Sung words going right through two ears. Only volume.
Charlie M. Case is an author of fiction and poetry with roots in both U.S. coasts, and as such is never free of longing. He has been published previously in Long River Review, Unmagnolia Magazine, and Blue Muse Magazine. For more of his work, visit his web portfolio: https://cmcase.org/
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