Edward-who

 It’s really green today. I know that sounds weird but it is really green today. Some days the lake is blue and sparkling the way a lake should be. It’s the type of place that I would have played when I was little, when took that for granted. Other days the lake is dark green. Not angry or spitting in the wind, but just placid and totally unmoving. Like someone stretched a green tarp from beach to beach instead of the regular water. I smile to myself, enjoying the memories until one cut across my mind sharp and angry. I wince remembering. It was a green day then too. Leah had asked me to go swimming. “Come on Sarah. You&#

“Alex, dude. Come on man, I can’t cover you much longer.” A tall redheaded kid looks through the door of the men’s restroom. He has open enough just to see the door to the dining room. Fidgeting anxiously he wipes his sweaty palms on his apron. Alex looks over his shoulder at the redhead. “Just a sec Roger.” He pulls a twenty out of the pocket that he keeps his tips and rolls it quickly into a thin tube. With a habitual user’s grace he snorts the rail of coke he had made on the edge of the sink. He sneezes twice and wipes his nose with one of the bathroom’s linen towels, it comes away red. “Shit

Back and forward, it goes. Forward and back as well. Telling me always anything but how, or why, or what. It seems to stall as the day goes on, slowing but never ceasing. Always it moves, back and forward, Forward and back. It will never stop, the ticking of that blasted clock

Always waiting, always smiling. Is there life behind that smile?