modern abstract by frooit
ouatim, sands & el
originally posted 4/06/04
.
.
.
.
Sands owns a striped violet, button-down shirt. The kind with long sleeves and an outrageous collar. He put El in it for a day and ended up with his face pressed and held down into the dust coating the surface of a scarred bar table. Sex and death. He sucks down black tea because he likes the burn. He likes Mexico because of the burn. He likes El because of the burn.
Sweat, and steel, and yellow sun; everything's upside down and inside-out already. No assembly required. He likes this trip, this dive, the taste in his mouth. Goes down like coffee, settles like cooling metal, twists like something living. Mexico's a snake in the grass. But El's too cool for that. He's a part of speech. The legend. Cartel's doubt, everyone's fear, roving night sky.
His favourite ice cream is Rocky Road, he drinks coffee black when he can get it, he smokes anything and everything, and constantly pesters Sands about quitting. He has no taste in television, and gets his boots shined if it's convenient. He likes red. Blue the least of all. He visits churches often, has a sense of humour and twangs a mean Malaguena.
When Sands was twelve, he saw the Pacific for the first time and had a lapse of sanity. Likens this life business to the ocean. The fucking, god-awful ocean. Beating down, rising up, drowning, foaming. All he can hear is roaring anymore. Or it's just the blood rushing through his head, and El, cigarette and tea flavoured, drowning him on land. Flowing over, inside, outside, rising.
Church bells chime.
And breath finds its way back into lungs.
"Fucking bells."
.
.
.
.