It's all in the details.This is your brain on drugs.
Little cement boy peeing in a bathtub, leaning back, hips pushed forward, one hand on a hip, the other at his penis which is a broken piece of concrete and a black copper pipe.
Girl in a tree, on the speaker, in stereo.
Grackle in the birdbath...taking a bath. Isn't that what they're there for?
There's a wedge of chocolate espresso cake in front of me. I haven't touched it yet. It's like a brown sponge, really like four brown sponges with brown vinyl between the layers.
A fly is getting to friendly with my chai so I put my hand over it, cupped upward so the foam doesn't get on my hand.
Now the fly is getting familiar with my cake. I swat him away and get chocolate on my hand.
Red table. Red enamel metal table, metal chairs connected to it, old chairs, like heavy yard chairs -- lawn chairs -- once bright colors like the table but thousands of butts and backs have worn away their paint jobs. One has a peacock feather back, though not as elaborate as that sounds. The one next to it, across from me, has a more simple arched back. The chair next to me has little pill shaped holes in it, little wafer ovals, smaller than wafers, like miniature horse tracks, an odd series, strange pattern of holes in the browned metal.
There are two cottages on the other side of the wooden fence. Stucco houses, one off-white with deep red trim, the other off-white (but more greenish than the other off-white, which is more yellowish) with blue-gray trim. It's like the colors of the Civil War, two little houses, side by side, cute little houses. I could sit here at this metal table and write all day about those two cottages.
But not today.
Today: chapter seven.
Pecan tree over my shoulder, shading the table, catching the rain and magnifying, throwing it down in bigger drops.
Flies are crazy here. I guess they're used to getting fed around here; open garbage cans with remnants of chips and salsa and other leftovers -- chocolate espresso cake? Not yet.
There's an ironing board planted in the yard; no, two of them, side by side and catacorner, turning reddish-brown with rust, breaking down, eventually to return to dust. Plastic won't do that. Or at least not as quickly. Plastic just tends to get dirty. It doesn't disintegrate, it camouflages.
