honea byrne

  10 . “What do you really see?”   Nothing left but darkness. The kind of darkness that sticks to you. It is a wreck that you’re about to get into. No avoidance. BRACE YOURSELF! NO. Don’t brace yourself! If you do you’ll break something. Break it in a way that’s difficult to fix. Maybe unfixable. “Let it go! Scream it. Let it go. Then start lowering the volume of your voice. Bring it to a whisper. Bring it to a mumble. Bring it to a sigh. Bring it to a breath. The breath you take, “Breathe the world in: all the angst. All the memories. All the answers you really want to know. The answers that you have convinced yourself that you need to know-is the only way you’ll be happy.” Told it. Hold it. Hear your heart beat faster from the lack of breath. Then breathe it out. Breathe God in. Know it now through not knowing now. Just “Be.” And then. No then. On an eternal now. Nothing is left but everything. ….missing text…and when l returned.       Face reality, or “Nor” the rea

  9 “A memory of someone else.” “Poor Painting on a wall across from Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale Mississippi. dog hit by a car,” Catalina said looking out of the van window. “Damn it’s getting smoky in here,” Fred said, then proceeded to press buttons that rolled all of the windows down.   “That smell,” Peter said in a monotone, still sounding trapped in a hallucination. “Open your eyes,” the voice said. Its face was bright and shaded. Every three seconds the face turned black, then back to shiny gold. “To know.” Peter said. “What is going on with him?” Judas asked. He was concerned. Judas, was hardly ever concerned. “Wake him up,” Samuel said. “No, he has to go through it. Think of it like waking someone up from a dream. It will kill him,” Mammie replied. “She’s full of shit,” Fred retorted. Catalina turned her head and looked out the window at the smoke coming out of the van, made it look like the van had a tail.   “Who are you?” Peter asked. “I am yo

  8.   “This is where it happened,” I kept saying that over and over again. Carlton turned up The Verve album “Storm in Heaven.” The Arias sounded like I was in some sort of tunnel, where I could feel the reverb. I started to cough hard. Carlton hit the button to bring my window down-I came to…   “What’s going on?” “Dude, you’ve been talking to yourself for hours.” “Were we in a graveyard?”   There was no traffic on the road. They followed Samuel across the street. They all heard a strange buzzing. “Highway eight,” Peter said. “You hear that buzzing in your ears? That means the devil is near,” Mammie said playfully. She looked at his fearful facial expression; then continued, “You know an 8 on its side is the symbol of infinity.”   “The dead have a different sense of time than we do.”   “You want a cigarette?” Carlton asked, as he handed me a cigarette. “WHAT THE HELL!?” He exclaimed as he swerved to avoid hitting a group of people that were crossing the str