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 ^{(it's beta!)}

I've started to watch the night sky as the summer deepens and everything begins to fall apart. The moon casts no shadow and the light bathes the grass and the stars shine while no one smiles. In the woods behind my home a small river runs to the park and in that park gentle kids try and make it work and the college bumper stickers send the girls crying about the ends of their romance and the boys just sit newly alone and pray to be numb. I lost my St. Christopher and I never feel safe.

A friend's mother found me a Vincent De Paul medallion and I wear that now; I never see the girl anymore and her mother still calls every once in a while to check up on me because I always worried her despite any merits I had. She says she loves me like a son and every time I see her she kisses my cheek, telling me everything will be okay even if I am smiling and laughing with her daughter and our friends and I wear her medallion to remind me that weariness always seems to linger within me.

The daughter was one of those people with a true faith in her Lord and she only wanted to be loved by a good man and to bare good children and to live in a good house; her eyes were full of hope and I would drive her everywhere because she never had her license and she's one of those people you always want to be around even if you'd never want to be with them. I'd like to see her again some time, but I never plan to, and if you want something it will never happen.

Rain falls and the heat turns into mist, wrapping around this picnic table and my shirt begins to dampen. My glasses fog and I remove them, touch my palms to my eyes and look at a newly blurred moon. The stars and the moon hang now like electric candles and a chandelier in a foyer from a distance; I am looking through a window to appreciate God's design and even in the newly modern interpretation there is still beauty albeit architectural as opposed to wonderful.

And I don't know sometimes about any beauty being truly wonderful; if it can be attributed to God isn't that just supernatural architecture, and if the beauty is in the science working out just right, isn't that just natural? And I don't know, and it doesn't matter, I would just save the word for those rare moments when everything seems to work out and not now as the fog clouds the stars.

The fog rolls and I walk back up the hill to my home, a path created by my father on a riding mower with no brakes and we pushed it back up and just barely made it. Sticks and leaves have begun to cover it since the last cleaning and the foliage cracks and that's all there is. The rain slicks the ground and I want to fall except I need the clean and water only stains these cheap shoes.

We painted the front skirt of my car with low grade paint and it swells somehow in the rain, washing off more and more each time, and I start the car and drive. The shifter is broken and it moves whether or not the brake is depressed, and so as the engine turns over I'm in reverse and the car jerks forward then back and I let it ride.

New tires and new windshield wipers and a new engine would help things but it's more natural this way, degraded by time and by its driver and by everyone who has used it, and it seems so human that way. I don't believe in much but I believe in this car and the air freshener dangles slowly. A girl used to smoke in this car in the passenger seat and she'd spray perfume all over herself in the drive way of her home and she'd give me a long hug and say we need to do this more and she was doing coke a lot but she always kept me close and I miss that. I still speak to her, and she keeps losing weight, and she borrows my jacket from time to time because she's always cold. Her ex best friend is now one of the people I surround myself with, and that girl worries so much about the perfumed one, and I never know what to say except that I'm worried too.

The car still smells like that jasmine now, just faintly, and the pine scent meshes, and it's not even attractive, and that is all there is. My girlfriend isn't the perfume type, and I never ride her in this car because it's unsafe and it's old and it's not the way I know her, but sometimes I wish she'd let herself linger more in that sedan. And I drive this car to remember the past, and I drive this car because it's the only thing I truly own, and I drive this car to forget who I've become. I need wheel locks, and I need a new engine, but I love this car.

The rain falls harder and I park outside a grocery store and smoke a cigarette as I walk to the porch. I sit again and watch the sky as the stars disappear and only the moon is left. Inside there are lights and people and all the necessities for life to continue on, and I sit on this bench, and I want only to find someone to linger with.