Our Abode

            We’re speeding down Transit road.  All three of us are in the front seat of Austin’s truck and  headed to an undetermined destination.  It’s not even that warm, but it’s the first day in months that isn't freezing.  I’m sandwiched between my best friends, Austin and Charlie, with the windows rolled down and blink-182 blaring from the shitty radio in the old Chevy.  We’re all smoking these horrible cigarettes that Charlie got from the Indian reservation.  They don’t taste like anything; it’s like I’m smoking air.  I rip out half of the filter, but it only improves the flavor slightly.  I don’t even know why I’m wasting my (partially) healthy lungs on something this mediocre, but I am.

“Aust, where are we even going?”  I ask as Lockport whizzes by us.  

“Away.  Anywhere,”  Austin offers as an answer.  I put my cig out in the make-shift ashtray we made last summer (an old Tim Horton’s coffee cup in the left cup holder of his truck) and light up another one.

“Let’s go to Vic’s,” Charlie suggests, flicking the ashes of his cigarette out the window.  I nod in agreement.  Vic always has bud at his place, nothing to disagree with there.  Austin speeds through a red light near the produce market (he’s honestly the most reckless driver in the universe.  I don’t know how he hasn't managed to get a ticket,) which means we’re out of Lockport.  Out of one town and into the outskirts of another.

 “We should go out west, get out of that piss hole.”  Austin is always talking about how much he hates Lockport.  How it’s an old washed up town, full of liars and people who don’t give a fuck about anything.  He’s always dreaming up these big plans of leaving, going somewhere warm, making something of his life.  I've tried to tell him that Lockport’s not as bad as he says it is, how its got a certain charm, but he won’t hear any of it.  Austin can’t wait to get out of Lockport and never come back.  That’s what everyone says though, isn’t it?  How they’ll leave their hometown, say they’ve got nothing to hold them down to it anyway, and never come back home.  But it feels like everyone ends up staying.  You always see the same people getting coffee at the same diner downtown.  The same teenagers are always loitering in the same parking lots.  To me, Lockport is one of those towns that everyone claims to hate, but never seem to leave.

Bedroom Eyes

            My eyelids flutter open slightly, and for only a second I am suspended in that time between being awake and being asleep.  Where you’re out of the world of dreaming, but still not part of the world of the conscious either.  In that second, I believe that you’re still in bed next to me.  Then it’s over.  I glance over to where you would be asleep, and all I find is empty sheets.  Pale, morning sunlight is dancing through the eyelet curtains that I’ve had for only God knows how long.  I stare at the patterns that are swirling on your side of the bed.  I remember watching them on your sleeping face when I woke up in the morning.  I was always awake before you.

            You’d always wrap yourself around me while you were sleeping.  You’d pull me in close and not let go.  Let me tell you; I have yet to experience anything nicer than waking up in your strong arms.  I’d often just lay there, tangled up in all of you.  I wouldn’t move or try to wake you.  I’d breathe in the smell of us; the mix of your Old Spice body wash and my kiwi shampoo.  As much as I loved you, I loved us even more.  I’d memorize the rhythm of your breathing.  You were always the one thing I could count on to be stable in the whirlwind of chaos that is my life.  Then you’d stir slightly, and I’d know you were waking up.  Your blue eyes would meet my brown, and we wouldn’t say anything.  Neither of us uttered a good morning, because it didn’t need to be said.  We both knew it was already a good morning.  We’d stay wrapped up in each other in bed, our cold feet rubbing together, and our smiles identical.  I remember it was waking up with you, when I was looking into your heavy lidded eyes, I realized that while I had never really liked blue eyes before, they were now my favorite color.