The boy looks up at the sky and reminds himself he used to hate the sun.
Used.
Yes.
He smiles and buries his gaze back to the ground.
It only reminds him of nothing but a faceless crowd, their masks, you see, pointed in his direction, no, begging for his face, he’d hope he could be faceless. Their shoes clap against the pavement it’s so loud your heart beats in your ears anyone would mistake it for a conversation, an argument, laughter at a distance, whispers of shit and fuck and fuck and fuck when these shoes are trying to tell you something.
Write. Drink that vodka. Write again.
You take that stop.
They’re not real.
Drink that vodka.
Smoke that cigarette.
Three minutes. Five.
Walk again.
Hands in the pockets. Face buried on the pavement painted in fake bricks painted in someone else’s face you want to forget but can’t forget.
Shake your head.
Erase. Erase. Erase.
Walk again.
Blend in.
This boy, he doesn’t hate the sun anymore. It’s still the same faceless crowd, begging for him to notice, still unfazed, you’re not stoic, the whispers come, you’re not good enough, copy the crowd, and be faceless until what someone with a face would hear would only be a jazz of shoes clapping from a distance. It’s the same scene at four or five in the afternoon with the sun on the horizon, painting everyone in every shade of marigold.
You want to go home but you don’t know what’s home. You don’t want to go. You don’t want to. You don’t want. You don’t.
You, do you know what’s home?
For him, what’s left with the sun is, you don’t know, but there’s nothing. But this is the good shit about nothing: He doesn’t remember memories—painful memories. He doesn’t remember bitter or the sweet or the bittersweetness of staying up late, downing bottles after another and after with people he isn’t connected to anymore.
They say good night, and he says good night. They say goodbye, and he hangs up.
Or maybe stay up late by some waiting shed, waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Smoking and smoking and smoking. Still, he left the place with nobody. Believe him if he ever tells you he wasn’t being stood up. The last minute, he convinced himself he wasn’t waiting for anyone.
This.
This is what’s good about nothing. You're not forced to remember anything. You just walk down some busy street, horns blaring, shoes clacking, but there’s nothing. There’s nothing good, but there’s nothing bad about it.
You are faceless.
You are anyone.
He used to hate the sun. Used. Yes. When it’s always the aftermath of staying up late some waiting place, the aftermath of laughing and talking and confessing and laughing again in the middle of the night, when in truth it’s silence flooding the next morning and then the next, and then the next.
What do you use to hate?
