By Leo Lobbestael

… Looking down at his cigarette, he laughed.
He took another satiating inhalation,
a smile still pursed on his lips
and gazed at the kid across the street.
That kid identifies as male?
The kid with a microphone, earring and slim jeans?
This kid must be lost!

Kid looks up, and then beyond and past the blur.
With his slim jeans and rolled up flannel,
he couldn’t be bothered.
Pop-Eye singing and bull-nosed,
a flipping-off the world look,
he rolls his grin into a frown,
because … because he’s got it?
He knows the numbers?
He has the fit?
He turns in at night by turning on Facebook
and scrolling through the worlds to find her.

She is not there, she’s laying in her empty room
pumping heroin into her veins.
She is crying.
Then she is laughing,
and the world can’t fit her mind anymore.
She’s happy to leave it.
And her thoughts and the room become vacant together.

Two weeks pass and her story
is published in a local paper. The Paperboy sees it first.
He does not know her, but feels bad for her.
If only she would have gone to church, he thinks
as he blindly throws a paper through the window
into someone’s living room.

The paper tears at the hearts
of the people that read its script.
They have it right don’t they?
They must have had the numbers
with their lips all pursed and grinning.

Then a man gets off work.
He is angry.
He hates his life.
He hates people.
He hates everything.
He goes to his home, sees the broken glass,
and destroys his home.
He burns his house down.
The angry man goes to a hotel takes his clothes off
in front of a mirror,
looks down at himself and smiles.

The cleaning lady happens by,
looks through the window and sees him reflecting back at her.
She likes to shop, wear expensive clothes,
is kind and gentle and gives birthday cards, kisses and hugs.
All this falls to the floor.
This empties her thoughts.
He must be ill, she thinks.
There is no other explanation for her.
He doesn’t have it that is for certain.
Then in her mind she cant wait to spend money,
buy herself something, anything.
And soon his illness fades away
and her thoughts plunge from the floor.

And, in another room,
not far from that place or any other place,
but very unique, like nothing else,
there is a women.
Evenings she spends away from everyone.
Scents of stale tobacco linger
and a pair of old slim jeans lay under her bed.
A few crinkled smiles lay worn out
in a shoe box somewhere forgotten.

She is nude and feels comfortable,
but longs for something else
and hates it all quite deliberately.
Her bed is stuffed with cash,
but she wont spend a dime.
Scrupulously, she counts each penny
to find her way to somewhere better than where she is,
but really no different than anywhere else.
She knows this, too, and she stares at the floor.
The floor looks back, lonely and empty.

And across the street, a man smokes a cigarette smirking …

About the author: Leo Lobbestael studied in Chicago and received a master’s in Clinical Psychology. After graduation, he became disgruntled with education and capitalism. He moved to the Yukon, where he began practicing as a therapist before heading south to San Diego. His passion is the human experience. He says he is currently wandering the earth, and more accurately his soul, to find congruence, love and humility in both the fluff and the subtleties.