Prisoners Ate Here

Living under the overpass in that old refrigerator box in the way you did, I know you found hope.

It smelled like split pea soup when I thought of you and that refrigerator box.  Every time I thought of you I smelled it.

And then I looked up the word "scalene" just the other day and realized that it spoke more of you and me and those caissons (as they went rolling along) than I could have imagined.  "No two sides equal."  Truth does not come in degrees, you always said, but this was more true than the truth of a good coffee.

So that man in the straw shirt bought two coffees and waited for his lover.  "Random" she said to him when she arrived, "you are always so random."  Why?  Where was he supposed to be? I'll show you random.

But as the sleep fell upon me I could not smell the split pea soup anymore and so the memory of that old refrigerator box went the way of the memory of the man in the straw shirt, and I chose not to care.

I closed my eyes and the night became as bright as the day.