Light

Spring Break: Daytona Beach

So here is how it begins. We are travelling down the path cleared by the dozers three weeks before. The sun through the treeline speckles the hood of the vehicle as if this is film noir. I awake from this dream and you are there on the hood riding and screaming at the top of your lungs. This is R&R, or so they call it. Safe territory. I look back for a moment to see if Willie and Kyle are still following. You scream more wildly as I run off the path, and then recover. They are there and you and I, and it seems like 4 boys on spring break in Daytona Beach.
I think briefly of Liz and the kids back in Kansas. Of the way she hangs the sheets out to dry on the line out back in the summer. I know nothing of what you are thinking as you let out that yawp again. I think you may think little of things outside of this moment, or any other. That may be the best policy considering the circumstances.
Back in November, when I met you, you seemed as strange to me as a cloud. Like being in a cloud when you are coming down in an airplane and all of the sudden the whole world opens up to you just before landing. It always scared me shitless, but I think you like the cloud. You revel in it. And the site of land below curls your toes, makes you think of home, childhood, your mother… perhaps.
And then there is this sound. We all hear it and I break the truck just before Kyle plows into us from behind. It’s coming from up above. From across the sky came a screaming, and you, little ol’ you, burst into spirals. Me thrown 300 feet back. And I looked to the sky and there were one million fireflies, and you, alternatingly red, green, blue and then, at last, gold.