[nospaces]
His funeral is in Detroit.[break][break]
Tex's, that is. She'd known his accent wasn't thick enough to have marked him a New Yorker, born and bred, but she's never bothered prying for the details of his origin or his life story when he wasn't willing to bring it up. Family back home, then, she's told. Not unloving, but deserving of better: a better son, a better legacy. She could bark out in laughter at that – Tex was the best goddamn thing to ever happen to her, and the thought that he was ever needed to be more strikes her as brazen – but there's no room for laughter in the hollow halls of a dead man, and she's afraid that she hasn't got enough life in her left to afford it. There is no formal invitation extended to her. What would the Subway Messiah's shining star have to care for a burial some hundreds of miles away from the stage? No, no, there is no formal invitation – but she takes it anyway, her whole life in her hands, and sets her sights on Michigan's filth-ridden city of crime. For the memorial, she says, of a friend. (To escape New York, she doesn't.)[break][break]
She sleeps on the train and dreams of his neck between her hands. There is nothing to compare the breaking of bones beneath fingers to, not in an open palm. Punches thrown have snapped noses, perhaps, but she can't recall it vividly through the haze of her drunken escapades, nor does she think it would compare with the feeling of a collapsing trachea, forced down between pressure, hot, hard, a little more and maybe he'll know what it feels like, himself. It was an act of brutality carried out by a mind brainwashed with hate. Plunging that knife through Tex's chest hadn't been Sammy's intent, she figures. At the very least, the scrawny knife-brandishing man hadn't been prepared for the consequences of a ill-planned murder: it had shown in the frenzied look in his eyes, the way he'd begged her to spare him when all of the light had drained from her own. Tex hadn't been the only life lost that day, no. Despite herself, despite herself and all of the memories she'd had with the friend she would sit patiently at the funeral for with eyes that could draw no tears, she can't help but think of the latter's more.[break][break]
(Murderer.)[break][break]
They bury him six feet beneath the dirt on a sunny day, and DT Jesus wishes they'd bury her with him. Dead – alive – all the same.[break][break]
Her guitar thumps against her back, and she watches the train home leave the station without her.
His funeral is in Detroit.[break][break]
Tex's, that is. She'd known his accent wasn't thick enough to have marked him a New Yorker, born and bred, but she's never bothered prying for the details of his origin or his life story when he wasn't willing to bring it up. Family back home, then, she's told. Not unloving, but deserving of better: a better son, a better legacy. She could bark out in laughter at that – Tex was the best goddamn thing to ever happen to her, and the thought that he was ever needed to be more strikes her as brazen – but there's no room for laughter in the hollow halls of a dead man, and she's afraid that she hasn't got enough life in her left to afford it. There is no formal invitation extended to her. What would the Subway Messiah's shining star have to care for a burial some hundreds of miles away from the stage? No, no, there is no formal invitation – but she takes it anyway, her whole life in her hands, and sets her sights on Michigan's filth-ridden city of crime. For the memorial, she says, of a friend. (To escape New York, she doesn't.)[break][break]
She sleeps on the train and dreams of his neck between her hands. There is nothing to compare the breaking of bones beneath fingers to, not in an open palm. Punches thrown have snapped noses, perhaps, but she can't recall it vividly through the haze of her drunken escapades, nor does she think it would compare with the feeling of a collapsing trachea, forced down between pressure, hot, hard, a little more and maybe he'll know what it feels like, himself. It was an act of brutality carried out by a mind brainwashed with hate. Plunging that knife through Tex's chest hadn't been Sammy's intent, she figures. At the very least, the scrawny knife-brandishing man hadn't been prepared for the consequences of a ill-planned murder: it had shown in the frenzied look in his eyes, the way he'd begged her to spare him when all of the light had drained from her own. Tex hadn't been the only life lost that day, no. Despite herself, despite herself and all of the memories she'd had with the friend she would sit patiently at the funeral for with eyes that could draw no tears, she can't help but think of the latter's more.[break][break]
(Murderer.)[break][break]
They bury him six feet beneath the dirt on a sunny day, and DT Jesus wishes they'd bury her with him. Dead – alive – all the same.[break][break]
Her guitar thumps against her back, and she watches the train home leave the station without her.