When You Find The Girl Who Can Live At 100 MPH
By Matt Staff
She showed up the other night in spite of her nature. She met my friends and me at a tavern tended by a heavily bearded man that served up piece of mind from the bottoms of bottles.
Yes, she showed, and when she showed the other night-she struck, yes she struck like lightning.
She struck an impact upon my assumed solitude, and ripped the rationality of thoughtful action at its seams, and she burned hellish magic with eyes that were cedar stones every time I held her glance.
I existed on her glance, and I drank on her glance, and I drank to her glance. Bartender pour me another. Fuck. Make it a double. To the blank page! To the muse!
When I was most drunk and most tired and most sore of soul I would see her staring back at me from the thinned eyes of strangers, and the eyes of black cats that brought black luck, and the eyes of red dogs that barked love and loyalty.
I would see those eyes of hers as I walked through grand halls that were lined with grand books that held pages of simple meanings and endings that were confused beginnings. I would see those eyes of hers as I wandered through blue rain, and green mist, and brilliant pink rays of sun that all excited change.
I remembered those lips of hers that had kissed my lips with something caught between distilled, bourbon washed meaning and 4am conversation.
4am conversation endured, we were just crazy and alive enough to evade sleep’s hold.
Eventually she fell asleep.
I read ‘till the sun rose. I took my book outside, and I smoked, and I read more. The book I read was about motorcyclists riding on a wave of chaos that stirred fear and disapproval and loathing from all those that bore witness to the wave.
Eventually, she woke. I went back inside. Her and I talked for a while underneath the covers about five-fingered dolphins, and just where humans came from.
Then we rustled ourselves fully awake, we dressed ourselves decent, and we walked to coffee down the street.
As we walked to coffee she summoned praise or vulgar compliment from a man with a cracked red face that had long ago given his soul to the devil’s mistress, or an eagle for a feather to tuck behind his right ear.
After we ordered and received our coffees we sat on a bench under a tree, and she showed me pictures of afar places, as we drank those coffees strong enough to spark passing clarity of thought.
She showed me pictures of…very dark green snakes with forkish tongues that hissed poison, and white turbans atop sun stained faces, and a map of the heavens etched on a copper tablet commissioned back in 1730.
She ran fast enough to fall on board a ride runnin’ on the endless fumes of mad ones, alongside a fella livin’ an easy 100mph-for a beat.
To the roads ahead, and the drives we’ll take through dead ends.