The Weekend

The weekend warriors are up before the sun is trudging along the echoes of pavement, defeated. Eyes reflect images of dim streetlights and histories of broken families wear old smiles, like cheap lipstick from yesterday. One soldier drapes a red jacket across bony shoulders another shivers from early morning showers in front lawns. Hearts heavy, they retreat one by one to tents made of brick as the milk truck sputters, then wakes the rest of the world. The night was war, an abandoned house their battlefield. The enemies are the consequences that would follow their choices tonight and the weapons relaxation in states of solid, liquid and gas. There was no captain of the ship or man in charge; everyone for themselves, and whoever was left over in the break of dawn. There would be no winner. The army consisted of dreamers desperately digging with dirty fingers for poorly thrown together, temporary handfuls of dignity. The neighborhood bled, clouds sniffled, and sewers moaned. Front doors open as fighters drag chained ankles into lifeless living rooms wearing shields of ignorance and masks of neglect. They stood their weight in gold, raw feet soles sewn into the carpet; Middle-aged pupils dilate as veins surface near receding hairlines. Fighters are spellbound as armor falls apart and close eyes to imagine better mistakes for tomorrow. The walls of the house were colored like foundation as lumps of worry and self-consciousness in throats of the amateurs rolled down young esophagus’s washed down with alleviation and burst into elated bats leaving a cave as adrenaline coursed through veins like a two minute water ride with an hour long line. Girls had names as pretty as their freckles and premature laugh lines as boys cleverly wore collared shirts to veil miniscule muscles and everyone missed important phone calls for the sole sake of missing them. They closed the blinds of all the windows, Begging the improbable world to give them one more weekend.