But one fiend at a time

I'm the boy in the room with a hole the size of a fist punched through the door at the end of the hall. The year I realized the girl who sat in front of me, Julie, wore a thong, I smoked enough marijuana to come home completely detached from reality everyday but in tune enough to sit somberly in front of a television older than me and have silent tears drift down my cheeks.

I'm not sure what the tears were for. But outside the sky tore itself apart with snow and other cold things like wind, while my father tinkered around in the kitchen.

The winter was quiet enough to hear him chew his crackers through two well constructed stories and a hollow bodied door and one old television dubbed over with "Obscured by Clouds." When he peeled an orange it would wake me.

Trees croaked with blankets of snow, and wind was thankfully loud enough to drown out the sound of his throat clearing. Somewhere, though, I could hear a gripped pen in a white knuckled fist giving me D's and F's. Leaned back in my home, back pressed against fist-punched walls within the Water's soundscape, I could hear my punishment from the future. Future father would say,

"C's are a disgrace."

And the house would creak, quiet enough for socks three rooms over to grind against a carpet and wake everyone from a deep sleep. Hidden girlfriends would huddle under covers and their soft voices would be hushed by their loves. Drunk sons head upstairs to deposit drugs first, and secondly they would warm food in microwaves while above their light stomachs and heads, a father would pace from bathroom to bed. Kidney stones are better than divorces and widows. The silent pain from a kidney stone eventually fades.

Grey pants sit on my floor. Lone socks converse in the corner. Dances with shadows on my chair. A light wind blows outside, cutting through the snow on the trees. It falls like lint from a belly to the bathroom floor. Harmless. Somewhere a single hand detached from all that is youth slips an envelope into the bin. Only name is marked for my father.

I am in the woods laughing with my friends like the last day of school.

A sun slowly sets over the individually ordered houses. Everyday and it's nothing different. The same cars driving come by like old women at a pants sale. A cyan backs into the driveway. Dark grey parks along the street. Tires being more costly than convenience. I try to stay away.

Non-ringed hand reaches into the mailbox. I pull on some resin. His hands tear open the envelope filled with C's.

Some days later and I'm sitting in the Prague, slowly sipping Pilsner Urquel and laughing with a Czech blond about the desolate ways of Minnesota.