Separate Distances

.1:10 am

Two bums looked at each other across a hundred feet or so of piss-stinking, lawn-green park. There's a bench and they both want it. It's a small bench and no one's ever gonna be able to get comfortable on it. Already half the boards have been pried loose for bum breakfast barbecues. And only odd Ripley's midgets could really stretch out on it. That's one of the bum's curses: always sleeping tight and fetal whether it be to fit carefully under a makeshift mosquito net or just to make himself think he's warm.

Two bums drawing closer to the coveted bench and then there's recognition.

"Hank?" One questions while still moving closer to hoped for territory.
"Bronco?" The other responds, trying to take bigger steps.
"I thought you was going up to Lisa's."
"I thought you was."
"Well, ain't that the fuck. You got a smoke?"
"You got a snort of whiskey?"
"I might have something just so long as you know that's my bench."
"Now you can let a man sit awhile," calculating Bronco's seriousness and manpower.
"Long as you got a smoke and I got some whiskey. After that I need to do some dreaming."

And a train whistle blows and they both look off into separate distances.

........

It's just black silhouettes of rocks or whatever they are and the stars are so bright it's like the Milky Way herself is going nova and the moon prances proudly right through the middle of it and he watches the tail lights until they can't be seen no more. And then the quiet finds him. He lays right there in the middle of the highway on his back and surveys the stars. He's bright enough to know that each star's light comes from a different, vastly different point in time and he's crazy enough to believe that it means something.