Pony Express

Phantom postmen darken my doorstep all afternoon. Every time, I spill my coffee as I propel myself towards the door like a jungle cat. 

The first time, it’s my landlord angling for back rent. I sit her down, pour some coffee. Regale and placate her with nonsensical stories from the strained realm of desperation. I lounge next to her on the couch, our knees touching lightly. Let her dream a little dream. God, in your infinite wisdom and labyrinthine plans, please keep me free from sexual contact with this old woman, Amen. 

The second time, it’s Mormons proselytizing their planetary rot. I shriek like a wounded wolverine and slam the door in their faces. They very possibly pissed in their magic underwear. My cell phone battery is dying as quickly as my spirit, stained with malady. The fingers stay crossed, nevertheless. 

The third time, my crackhead neighbor appears, sprung from a cartoon world, asking me how many extension cords I can let him borrow. Do I have at least three, he asks. Rigoberto, I say, kindly get lost in a fucking swamp. I love you, bro, but please drink something from under the kitchen sink and take a nap. 

I’ve never ordered anything from the dark web before, but here I am, melting, waiting for narcotics. Methodically, and with a frightening lack of self-preservation, I have burned every phone connect and delivery service over the course of the summer. The scarlet letter is spray painted on my forehead, on every t-shirt I own. Red paint drips from my mouth when I try to brush my teeth. Not even the corner boys will serve me at this point, cash in hand. I’m a marked man. 

Marked for what, I don’t know, but I feel an unwanted magnifying glass in the sky following me to the corner store, to the barbershop, smoldering my apartment’s tar- heavy rooftop when the sun is at its apex on a July afternoon in Doomsday Paradise, as I sit on the couch trying to hide from the lens. 

I think about the history of postal service in this stark and screaming country. Men on horseback, in driving snowstorms, galloping at full speed to deliver dispatches proclaiming Apache attack, coal mine collapse, the loving, dying declarations of a Civil War general to dear sweet Clarabelle. Trains and telegrams changed the game. The planet’s unceasing spin... accelerating things all the way to this cursed day, as I sit on a blood-stained couch in a dilapidated South Philly apartment, waiting for the Man in the postal uniform to hand me a package of Mexican brown dope, ordered 48 hours ago from an encrypted online marketplace. 

I decide to walk around the sweltering alleys and side streets of my neighborhood. The package will surely arrive when I return to my cage. Something about a watched pot never boils, something something. God, please give me acceptance of your will, and relieve me of the bondage of self. 

If my old, self-centered prayers were ever answered, I would have been in trouble. I no longer pray for God to get me through things, but to go through them with me, by my side, with love. I am grateful for every grain of sand in the desert, and this bedraggled but breathing effigy of the man I used to be. I continue to drag him around, wearing tape-held Adidas shelltops. I am grateful for elemental, mineral kindness. Every cold, jeweled droplet of water that has ever graced my lips in these slaughterhouse mornings, after interminable sequences of night.. 

Thirst sounds its dull and tired alarm through a sadder sickness. Instinct directs me to the water fountain outside of the community center. Reckless children perform acrobatics in and around the pool. Chlorine gnats and their zinc oxide-covered parents...at the time-traveling sight of them, I melt with love, despite it all. 

Holding on to the chain link fence for dear life, I see Tommy and Cadence walking down 7th street in my direction. I call to them, and Tommy flashes his doomed jester’s grin. I greet them on a sacred corner, my sensory system faltering. A million earthquakes and aftershocks contained in every liquid movement. 

Cadence shakes her head and tells me Tommy is as sick as I look, but she won’t give him any money. She’s following him around, though, because her love and concern is without boundary, unable to be caged by any earthly reason. My brief conversation with Tommy is a disjointed and mirthful jaunt down the rolodex of junky discussion tropes. We make vague plans to take our ladies to a Phillies game sometime soon. Cadence rolls her eyes but smiles a pretty smile. 

I continue down my nowhere path. The sun threatens to bite me into submission. I feel like Saint Simon of the desert, on his pillar. Economize movement, let chronology pass in lunar cycles. Drift somewhere cooler, mind, body and spirit. 

The maze of the city becomes unbearable. The walls of all the buildings become transparent in my state of madness, and I can see silent glimpses of everyone’s daily arc. A little soft shoe on the precipice of disaster, and here I am falling in love with humanity. Dopesick as I’ve ever been, feeling at peace with the hive. 

I make it back to my apartment, clutching a box of patriotic popsicles. The postman is traipsing up the block, impervious to the heat. No snow, no rain, no gloom of night, but plenty of heat. A patient man, I wait for the swift completion of his appointed rounds, seated on my own front steps like a visitor. As the hourglass sand falls where my heart resides in hospice, I count the granules, and watch kids play in the spraying fire hydrant.