1948

I am all jacked up on the drugs that killed all my friends. I am racing downhill on a never-ending stream of uncertainty. Only last week I saw a sign. It read ‘Wood and Coal’. Everywhere in town. The same sign. Wood and Coal.

You stand on the other side of an open field and try to resist me.

Once before I was too busy wiping the innocent minds of young children to realize that the thin fabric of my life was being rent at the seams by forces I didn’t care to comprehend. I stand alone in the cold on the east side of a central European capital city and wonder why I am still here and just where the significance of it all lies. Why are they coming for me? And when?

They go to school at an early age. They sit uninformed and uniformed, between their parents in the garden sunshine and pose for a photograph that will be beloved by that group of people for years to come. The adults peer into the sun and wonder about the timer and posterity. Their faces say nothing. The child’s eyes implore at you from the camera. They say ‘Have me. Fuck me hard. I want only you. I promise you that something wonderful must happen.’

Wood and Coal. The open fields draw us nearer to each other, like the electricity that crackles and sparks in the air during the warm darkness of the night. We ran down to the water’s edge and threw ourselves into the cold grasp of the current. Neither of us made it. I stand on the bridge and look at your picture in my wallet. You peer back at me, thinking of posterity.

Please forgive me. I was all jacked up on the drugs that killed all my friends, racing downhill on a never-ending stream of uncertainty.