Asphalt Years

The seat grips my legs, vinyl hot enough to brand. Hands slip on the wheel, sweat running fast, darkening the grip. Tar rises sharply; ink stings the air. Out in the lot old men haul chairs from trunks, metal shrieking, women hoist cardboard painted with the same demands. They settle in, knees braced, sweat dripping down their throats. The scrape of legs on asphalt hits again and again until it feels like the protest is hammering itself together.

Daniel cuts across the hood, a chair jammed under one arm, a sign dragging from the other. The checks on his shoes split at the seams, peeling like old scabs. Scar tissue pulls his mouth tight where piercings closed. A coil of ink flashes and vanishes beneath the sleeve. He doesn’t look over. He never has.

At the office he stays hunched, spine bent like a comma over the desk. The monitors bleach him out, push his eyes into shadow. Once by the copier the scars caught the light, red lines pulled tight across his mouth. Once, his shoes tapped beside mine at the elevator. No glance. He’s always there, holding silence, his body proof no one wanted but can’t ignore.

Older faces tilt toward the street. Wrinkles set like dry riverbeds. Daniel’s jaw works, clenches, lets go. We were eighteen when Iraq happened, shoulder to shoulder, screaming until our throats split. Eyeliner ran down cardboard streaked with paint. Now his Adam’s apple barely shifts when he speaks. Mine too. We hum now, where we used to howl.

The years press harder as chairs scrape asphalt and old bodies drop into them. Faces tilt toward the street, signs sag in hands gone slack with age. Daniel flickers in the row, a shape like any other. Hair cut short, mouth pulled where the rings once were. Nothing sharp left, only years compressed. What stays is the drag of time and the fight that keeps grinding, long after the sound thinned.

Behind the library a man is stretched across pallets, mouth slack, ribs poking at his shirt. A woman bends sideways in the fenty lean, swatting ghosts, talking to no one. Another crouches over a bag, pulling out scraps, putting them back, over and over, as if it keeps him upright. A block away, privileged people like me raise signs and sip from Stanleys, safe in their order. From the car it sits raw. Protest or performance, the line blurs. Maybe we’re only repeating emotions carved into us twenty years ago.

The door opens and the heat blasts up from the asphalt, heavy enough to choke.

We screamed twenty years ago and we’re still screaming, nothing fixed, nothing fed, bodies crumpled in the shade while we burn our throats for an audience that’s already moved on. The years stacked, the bills came due, the same fights circled back with new slogans and the same wreckage waiting under them. Years left marks, scars dragged across skin, and the broken are everywhere. But we carried on.

***

Notes:

This was written for L.C. Schäfer's Dollar Challenge - Country Roads Challenge.

It is exactly 500 words according to Vocal's word count, and avoids the personal pronoun "I."

Characters were inspired by individuals I observed at the No Kings Day protest.