Departed trail & Bitter trials.

Sunset with a night show of stars 

The evolution of the world was born from chaos, when I was growing up in high school I heard more. The protest spread to the Middle East on why the U.S. was helping them. The Middle East asked why they needed help from the U.S who brought more war. They had death and conquers throughout their nations, when an empire was taken over a new empire took over but ruled the same. War was common and many believed U.S. troop s were the same and didn’t expect them to help them to rebuild their broken homes. 

Later people we’re filled with hate against the U.S. troops and workers thinking that they were trying to win them over, so they can do something later that was like their old conquers. Riots was soon to follow but soon ended before beginning, many supplies that reach the middle east was the most needed. Foods and medicine reprised the riots from erupting during reconstruction of homes, and construction of new hospitals. Resolve was close in hand, both troops and volunteers in work came a site of common every day acts. Treaties were signed and peace was welcomed between warning countries, nations.

Hot days in the east were settling in, along with people in new homes. Schools opened for children eager to experience learning with desks for each student, instead sharing with three others. Troops stayed and work kept moving to build a system of water ways and pipes to bring water to the desert towns.  I heard the news over the radio as I packed for Collage that came to me at 18 in 2014 when the completion was done after 10yrs, over the years as a kid I would hear some news but I was busy growing up. Right now with this news I wasn’t that into it that others might have been, I was more than happy leaving my brother in long beach than the issues of the world I was far from my brother that reminded me of my dead mother and father to well; a year past and it felt too long and easy.

The work was too easy for me, reading text books as a kid now as an adult was boring for me seating in a class relearning things I know far too well. The only interesting thing was practicing on cadavers putting my knowledge to work. Days in collage was spent reading books in the library that were years ahead of me, I loved learning things beyond my class mates, time to time my brother would call me to check if anything was wrong and needed anything.  I knew my father and he was like him, he felt lonely when his in one place with no one so he go’s somewhere that has a face to remember, that’s one of the reason my dad always came back to my mother. I worked for a scholarship to CAL State and the money I had from my mother’s life insurance made my life easy without worries of paying for board, books, and live off of.

I would tutor others who were behind which gave me time with girls who were smart and I could talk to. I dated smart girls out of my classes being a tutor helped me be near them to be more than a tutor. In my 2^nd year I meet Angelina Walker and I soon learn that I can love someone and I could be loved. I became her tutor for science she was mine in geography, which opened me to her and evolved from there; it led me to give her a kiss, which brought out my feelings. I was in love with her and I didn’t know this feeling, I would date girls before for awhile tell they become boring to me, they became like the others who wanted to party and be seen with other guys.

It didn’t apply to me to have a life where I drunk ever night I had that experience already, and every time it’s the same, fighting over stupid reasons mainly a over a girl. I didn’t care for life that much in my youth, but as I fell in love, I grow to love life in all its’ beauty. I still love the beauty of life but I’ve grown to hate the life we people live. Oh I miss the feeling of love that I had with Angelina. She knew my pain and the rage and fury that died with my family.

She was strong for me, my tears that never came for my dead mother and father came out my new lover eyes of empathy. She held me to make me sure of myself, I held her to know that she’s real. Her arms are warm and wraps around me like a heavy blanket, but not too suffocating or hard to move when its warm covers are hold on to me to give me its loving radiant heat. I miss this strong woman that stood at my side holding me up to see the beauty I once ignored with books. The flashing dreams pull away from me, darkness in my closed eyes are brighten by the sun beaming in. “9:15 am, it’s time to wake up, 9:15am time to wake up, time to wake up, 9:15” , “mourning silting in place”.

                                                *****

Like the day before and before that, morning starts the same like always. The apartment computer spoke to me in a woman’s voice pleasant and softly. Wake up, showed, and went to the speed train, and work by 10:30 am. And again I’m staring out the windows of my office, with the same fantasy. Thinking of lying in a house filled with warm air, in a bed with young beautiful women of color, immersed in pleasure.

My flesh is satisfied, my mind at ease, my heart pounding exhausted. The mire thought excites me, it’s been long times since I’ve touch the flesh of a women. I am alone and bored in my office, “I think I’ll take a walk”. I walk out my room and gone down the hall heading to the other side of the hospital. Most of the rooms are empty, others are filed with patents waiting for a checkup for some common thing that takes a few treatments, or for a rare one that matches the sickness.

Years before in days of my youth disease were growing uncontrollable, new viruses were forming out of the areas came to be known as homeless towns. I saw the waves of panic on the public covered in masks, afraid of coughs, afraid of hand shacks; afraid to get sick fearing it could be something more than every day colds or fevers. I wasn’t afraid of this I knew each death would give the doctors a reason to keep searching, studying, and work for a vaccine. I knew a cure could never be made to cure the dead who died all ready, but I knew a vaccine was the closest thing. The changing world has led me here and I find its still changing, but the work I’m skilled at isn’t.   

The evolution of the nation went far but the medical brake through were slow, it was busier making already presage’s easier & safer. In a way it was a brake through, but still there wasn’t in other fields of medicine. The blade of medicine got dulled at its edge; the sharp tip was warring down to a nub, the force behind the blade was genital and barely left a scratch. Science was replacing our hand in the surgery room, and all we are is the operators of the machines that’ll replace us completely. These machines will become more like us, with faces that’ll try to be human, with a voice that is missed heard as our own and it will be theirs over shouting ours in the crowd.

Changes will accrue before even the eyes we hold will begin to see what’s happen being shaped by melt hands and minds. Computers that do our work will run the factors with no living being managing it all. Computers will repair themselves, and latter on they’ll build their own kind that will be smarter, stronger, and will last longer than us. These non-organic things will think of themselves as alive, and they are alive when they believe they are, even if a heart isn’t pounding inside.     

The day went on as usual, I waited tell night came and now I stand in my office waiting for the stars but I couldn’t see them where my view was. I wanted to see them and I went outside in the mid-dark end, cold as the day drew to the end. I walked to the empty park, on a wooden bench I rested myself looking up. The stars weren’t out but I could see the sunset braking through the clouds, the site I never seen in this unique way. It’s been awhile for me to see the stars even longer for the shift of day and night, a sunset.

My long brown coat kept me dry, the park was a glittery sparkle, no one was out or around, rain drops covered every surrounding thing. The mix of red and yellow autumn leafs floated in poodles, on the brunches a few still cling to trees they fill from, drops rolled off like round balls from the colored leafs. Buildings had a touch of moister to them that a little rain gives, a mist of water shots up making ripples as they land back down to the small body of water they laid before travelers pass through them. Metal lamp posts stood at each corner with a bright rainbow color surface that the rain brought. Warm light falls out on everything and me as the sun’s rays burns through the sky.       

The clouds were heavy and large; they reflected the sun off of them and through. The sun turn them dark red, which made the sky look a blazed of roaring fiery. The dimming light filled the sky with more than simple words can mean, only a feeling of staring out into a sky that is bigger than one man can ever be. The thought that appears in mind is that the world is bigger than us no matter how many times we measured it. We are only small pebbles that live on the earth, and looking to the sky it seems god did make the sun and moon to revolve around the earth.

Darkness came slowly behind the suns retreat; the air became moist nearly ready for rain. I knew the rain was to be here and with only a coat I could be dry for a few minutes. I been at the hands of nature and dealt without the comforts of any modern city, I spent time holding leafs to back away the rain water. Being an aid for Mexico relief I’ve been at nature’s hands and pushed down to meet her feet, I know when she’s about shift her mood to light and heavy tears. I need an umbrella.  

I walked to the drug store that I passed by each day to work and home, but soon stopped myself from taking the steps in. I saw a familiar face of a nurse walking my path to the speed train; I could see that she was counting her steps, her head looking down as she made each forward walk. This nurse was Tess Walt one of the many woman I would flirt carelessly and playfully with. I was here on a whim to see the stars and was satisfied with the sight that came; the rain that was approaching had moved my plans to another day. I am happy that I found Miss Tess here and I think maybe I won’t have to be harboring loneliness tonight.

I ran to catch up to her from the entrance way of the drug store. Her steady pace gave me a brief run to her, “hello miss Tess, walking home”, the focuses on her feet stopped and shifted to the voice speaking to her. I looked with a smile to warm her to talk with me, “hello, yes I am, why are you here you got off 30 minutes”, Tess, “yah I was but I had an urge to see the star’s tonight, but the rain clouds won’t let me see them”. We stood talking on the side walk corner of the park, with Tess’s black umbrella keeping us dry from the falling rain that I knew was coming and now here. The sweat woman before me was the silent person who talked when spoken to, I knew her for years and her youth had aged well like each woman who lives in the world that surrounds me.

Her sweat nature mimicked her sweat face, Tess’s beauty was less then all those I seen walking down in crowd’s of woman, but because of that I loved talking to her. Every man, every woman, all went to find the highest beauty which in the years had changed to mediocre in my eyes. Woman who cared kind and sweat faces were the most beautiful to me for their simple faces were rare in this world and most easy to distinguish from the crowds of common faces that I was stuck in. Tess stood in a black coat buttoned for warmth, black her down her back, a shapely figure that had light close fineness to an hour glass that most women wanted in the times of my youth, also tightness to her waist that shows the sign of inexperience of child birth. Her eyes had eyras’ of brown that moved inward to a dark gold as it meet her pupils; I saw them many times when I talked to her about work and when flirting without care.          

“Why go see the star’s that are out each night at the same time, the moon is just the same. When the dark sky is out it brings coldness that chills the bones, frizzes the breath when you breathe for air, the cold can make a face turn pallid of white sickness”. I gave a smile and pointed high to the clouds, “beyond the clouds are stars, moons, and planets, I realized people are too busy with the world at our feet than the endless universe above our heads. Besides I can’t remember the last time I had seen the night sky. Do you remember seeing them as a kid; remember how they made you feel just by looking up to them”. 

“I remember seeing them, but I don’t think I felt anything for them, their just stars in the night”, Tess. “You’re right they are just stairs but I just want to see them”. The rain that fell around us changed to a little mist of water fog. My eyes look to the hand that moves down from the sky to rest b at my side, my hand is sprayed with the mists damp touch, the mist was cold but not cold enough to bring goose bumps to where it lands. “It’s a mist now, the rain might let up, I won’t have to wait long to see what I want”.

“Yes it is, I have to go home good bye Mr. Morales”, Tess, “it’s cold out; let’s see if I a warm coffee can warm you, a coffee shop is just across the street”. “Hmm that’ll be nice”, Tess closed her umbrella for the need of it was no more, and the rain wasn’t heavy like hail or faded over to other place and let the sky go. The mist that drowned the air was still too cold and wet for us to let our coats stay off. We walked to the other side of the streets to get a warm cup, two black coffees with cream they way we both like, we’ve known each other well to know what we like to drink. The smell was thick as we came into the shop, the smell makes you light head but don’t mind it for it has so many to it, such as mint, cinnamon, warmed milked, and Carmel.

We ordered what we wanted and waited for seconds before going leaving with our drinks, I drink the simplest coffee because it’s not like those filled with such sugar that it makes you high-per-active. I paid for the two coffees and with a glance I seen a basket with umbrellas and one drew my eye, “and this”, I held a red umbrella to the store clerk and paid the 8.00 dollar charge. “If you don’t mind would you want to seat at the bench and wait for the stars, it won’t harm you just to wait and see the stars. Even if you get sick, you’re a nurse and easily could help yourself get better”. I walked to the bench I was at before, I laid my brown over coat on the bench for I won’t get, and Tess stood watching contemplating to stay or just to leave .

She thinks that waiting for stars is silly as well as that it wasn’t a big deal and couldn’t do any harm to stay. With a foolish smile she seat by me at my right, a minute passed of silence and sips of coffee. The wet mist had faded unknowingly; the clouds have turned from a dark gray to a lighter shade of its self. The changing clouds parted like a wide curtain that slowly reveals a live theater show, premiering the well expected and misunderstood spectacle of solar systems known and lost to the world that is showing its self now to us. With holes opening across the dark curtain as if moths were biting at it leaving small holes all about, each hole unmasked the show behind it giving more suspense at each hole gave way.

A large hole that made the middle had opened widen enough that it was above us. Like some black obis of endless space it opened if ready to sallow us into the cold darkness of space. If swallowed we would face dangers unexpected to the world we were taken from. Rays of suns can burn you if get too close to them, foreign planets are alien with unknown life forms or none at all. Floating without care to where the destination is but hoping to land some place to live or die, thinking its bitter than flying planet to planet. 

But we don’t have to worry for gravity holds us down, but we still drift off into space in our minds. Dim lights of red and blue stars in the night soon burned even brighter. They were so bright that it seemed they were doing it to reach from where they were to millions of light years away to be seen where we sat. The large opening was boarding a frame of clouds whose edges were touched by the air that made the frame of clouds now turned white. This color of white was more pure and clean that it had a mystical sense that it was a part of heaven that wondered away.

The in the center of the frame our eyes had watched this moments with much ah, I looked at Tess as her face pointed above. Her brown eyes were a reflecting pond under the sky, with a bright shine of unbelief at what was here before the blind eyes that neglected the stars time after time. This site had forged a picture seen many times by sailors and scientist how mapped the stars to guide the world and themselves. To sail seas far out of reach of the suns light to guide, to tell the days from months, and the beginning of the year. The sky was forgotten when the world we lived in became more interesting and more able to live in.

The sky had made a site that was commonly seen by many in the past, but when one hasn’t seen it the site is more. We didn’t know the constellation or the stories that inspired them but we enjoyed what was here, we were meant to see this show to know what was lost to the world hidden by clouds. “It’s beautiful I never seen the star’s this clear”, Tess. “Well the sky is clearer after it just rained; a marvel is what it is and nothing more. Our moment passed, Tess looked down at her water proof watch flashing an electronic lettering 8:16pm. “I should get home”, “care for an escort”, I spoke with a tune of kindness and smiling eyes, I guess I won her over.

  We walked on to the empty sidewalks with each other by the others side. Tess wasn’t staring down to count her steps like she was before. Oh I remember when I was bored and counted my steps home, I did this when I walked to an empty apartment. In the first years of my work at Memorial Hospital I didn’t worry of my steps because I made only a few, I drove home in a car to a wife who was my family. Each day I came home to a wife who worked like I did from morning to night, and in those nights we shared our dinner that we both helped made. All the times I slept, I slept with a wife I truly loved and miss; when my wife died I lost the will to live but couldn’t kill myself.

The days I passed without her were hard with each room holding memories of her. Those days carried a scent of her perfume in my nose I couldn’t clean off the blankets I slept in, or off the furniture I sat on, or off the walls that encaged me in painful reminder of her. I couldn’t live in a house with so many memories of a love lost, so now I live in an apartment that’s empty with love or memories of others, but the memories of loneliness. I still keep the broken house I clamed as a home with Eliza, I couldn’t bear selling it away to some unknown person who we’ll change it into their own home. It’s selfish to keep something when you have any other, but I won’t let a place that holds so many memories even how painful they may be.

Even if I box each picture, each piece of clothing, each settle thing that rekindles a scene lost to the mind and thought of each day of her, and though them in the attic I still want them around in a place I can go. It’s a feeling and thought that I can go to that house I shared for a time, and go through the boxes and feel with my hands each memory. Reimage the life I once lived, smell the scent now lost to my nose, I do remember what makes her scent and what it is, but sometimes I like to smell it and know it’s real. Move closer to the speed train with each block passing, and through the streets I talk to pass the time if it may be short or long. “Tess have you ever counted the steps home”, “no”, “umm I thought you were before”.

“When”, her tone didn’t show shame or shyness that she was, “right before I talked to you I was at the drug store ready to buy an umbrella, and there you were with your head tilted and your eyes on each step counting. I would walk home everyday passing the same buildings; the more you head in the same direction the longer if feels to you. Block by block, foot by foot, it seemed longer so I counted to see if it was, until I just stopped counting. I don’t remember the number of steps I took but I remember making them”. Tess was warmed not by the coffee she drank or by her long block coat that kept her dry, but by the shy heat on her face, for she knew the steps she’s counted a few times before.

Not out of curiosity of each step she walked or out of wonder if her path was steadily growing longer. It was merely out of boredom of why she did count, a drop in the temperature made it rain. I popped the red umbrella ready for the rain and so did Tess when I did, down our umbrellas the rain continues to fall. The empty streets hide the people who fear the rain’s sickness, a running nose, chills, coughs and the fever. Me and Miss Tess don’t need to be afraid when we know how to treat it and be well.

She guides me to a tall apartment building in the center of the speed train route, best known to me as the snake trail; and still we walk on word to Miss Tess’s house. I tell her of the times I was in Mexico, the good times where I saved lives instead of failing to. I tell a few jokes to lighten the mood of gloom to cheery laughs, she tells a few of her own. We past into the building after dropping the thick paper cups of coffee into a melt cylinder that was a mechanical trash, waiting in the front of the building always ready to collect the trash of passer bys. If a drop of trash came by from a blowing wind from an unknown direction carrying with it a simple piece of paper, the mechanical can would shake and melt arms would sprout from the sides and pick up the simple piece and through it in its mouth. The streets are clean for each building inside and out hold these mechanical trash reserves, and both drop off their collection into larger cans of plastic for the every other morning pick up, right before the unmanned street cleaners would take the streets over with soap and water, massive trucks would be the only things out. 

A group of men in large trucks as the size of tanks but longer would command the streets alone, with no others in their way. These mammoth tanks moved at a speed of a sloth moving on a hot day with no care to where ever he may be going, rubber wheels nearly the size of the old monster trucks in monster shows of mayhem and crushing melt of cars beneath its turning wheels. Men walked beside it in perfect sync with the mammoth tank, collecting ever trash can on each curb ready to be taken away to large factories to be sorted and recycled by the hands of machines. The mechanical cylinder cans are unloading so easily when compared to the old weekly trash pickups of over piling of waste of the week before. Dozens of these mammoth tanks would take time to work the whole city over; the numbers would take 4hours do the city and this worked well with the start of the city law curfew.

Each day started at 6:00 am and ended at 1:00 am, everyone were at home by that time to sleep and unknown to them at what was working outside their windows, working men operating machines on government wages earning what was called an honest living. Past the doors, through the halls, to the elevator waiting for Tess where we stop before, “thank you for the walk and for the night under the stars. I have to admit I never thought that the stars would be that beautiful and make me feel so good just by looking at the sky”, Tess was standing inside the elevator with me out the elevators path. “Neither did I, even thou I didn’t know what was going to be there it was a site to see”,  lights flash blue on 13 going up for Miss Tess, we hugged with a spoken farewell as she boarded. A low note tone sounds as the door closes her in, before both melt doors slide together my hand stops at the middle as it closed.

The doors opened to me, Tess pupils dilate with her expanding eye lids in surprise at me, round ovals of red hug her cheeks, “hello”, and I come over her body which seems as a hug but more like a vampire attacking a fresh victim ready to feast on its blood. Half way her mouth words hello before I come in to her face and silence her, before her words is half through. My left arm wraps around her lower waist and starts to rest at her back, my eyes close with the thought of sleeping not alone in a bed too big for one person. Her wide eyes soften to a close, surprise lips fall into the quick kiss that now rests between us. I push into her with my own being, turning her so both us are in the center of this small room that rises up to 13th floor. 

My right hand hanged with a red umbrella in hand, from each breath passing, a smell came into us touching our air ways down to the mouth entering out into each moving kiss. Tess’s perfume had been washed out with the falling rain and mist; we wear an odor giving out the smell of ozone, iron and the remains of surging lightening. This scent curves as it passes through our throats mixing with the air in our lungs becoming our breathe; it even flows to the brain making us light headed in a feeling of intoxications. My mind stays at ease still holding on to her as I stand with my hand to her back folded beneath the long black lightly wet, giving a shine of freshness gained only by the light that reflects. Tess’s legs weaken and still able to stand and walk, the low note of the elevator tone sounds as the door opens to the 13^th floor, a painted blue hall with paintings of octet flowers.

Without words she leads me through the hall to her room number#135, quick her hand turns the key and opens a door for us, still I hold on to her shoulder as our steps lead over the thrush hold to her apartment. Lights brighten as it sounds us coming in, a man’s voice welcomes Tess home, with me at her back we throw each foot with laziness so the rekindling kisses would last and the feeling that we had no time to wait for the, but still we went to her bedroom. She stops at the foot of a bed for two, I reach to her neck and pull slowly her black coat to the ground, I bring one kiss to this smooth action. To her neck my warm hands fold at her, puling to meet a kiss again where I lift, and I drop my coat by hers. I turn her to see my kind eyes filled with passion and lust, curl my tongue and tighten my jaw when she is at my neck biting and kissing while working her hands undressing me to full fill what was started in the small room elevator and led on in the halls of her apartment to this moment.

With a swift motion her hands thrust the coat to my suit off my back and parts my shirt, down my chest her fingers move to the construes of my strong and light muscles, the strength I weld is my will the muscles that once show it boldly have faded and my willing strength hides ready for me to use at my end. Unbuckles my leather belt with a touch of care free, with a gaze she looks with the same passionate and lustful that’s carried in each of my brown eyes. I keep her face pointing into me, I reach to her thighs and left her to the bed, her arms at a far and still we look at each other. My surgeon fingers move button to button untying her shirt, next I remove each heal off her gently, I dare not break the hold we share. The side of my cheek fly’s softly over the skin of hers, I skip to the end of that neck that calls me to kiss it again, I connect to where her chest begins and the end of her neck.

Her bottom lip cravers as I push apart her shirt with my warm touch and kiss each part that’s revealed, tell her bra is left holding on to her body. To steady her reaction she bites at it showing the bottom points of her front teeth. I undo what’s left on me and she does the same till each of us is naked, bare as the flesh exposed, our lust and heated passion is boiling. Teasing before as we did what we did slowly to bring an urge to give in wildly like an animal in heat, the pupils widen like before but kisses aren’t thrown, we both instinctively make love equal to that we held for so long for a love that wasn’t by. No fighting for control but giving in to the seduction that bible man of churches says rots our soul and condemns to the second layer of hell to be purified by fires that cleanses the soul in fiery hell.       

Moving with each move we feel the heat from our body bringing a sweet down the back, sweet at the brow, sweet down our chest. Our blinking eyes gaze forth at the night sky as it was braking like a thin cloth of curtain, razor blades dig in forcing the dark to retreat from the striking blows of the suns rising up to reclaim the sky and turn it to day. We stop to see it being made, clouds of gray burn red and orange with a faintness of yellow like the burning flame that is the sun, pulling back to our world we continue with a start of a faint kiss. I roll her so I look down to her, “thank you for keeping an old man company, I spend nights alone and now I won’t have to”. The sky mirrors out in Tess’s eyes, “I have been alone with no love and thought I would one day have it, I think of you as a man you’re not old for you give me no young men can give.

As years came and people got smarter and the world got smarter it got bigger when empty homes were made. Kids are seen but there aren’t many, women grow not baring a child and I don’t wish for one. I wish to be loved”, her soft tone pulls me to her for I miss the love I once had. If she wants love I will give love to her in pleasure, but pain surges between her thighs in a brief second, I discover the reason she was alone. I discover her first time pleasure and she allowed me to give it.

When all is done and passion has lowered its roaring flame that burned so hot it left us in a sweet, when lust has pulled its retreating waters to calm seas, we lay in arms with blanket covers at our rest bodies. Now we sleep for a change in loves cradling bosom, not in loneliness.