by Darius Rodrigues

Outside a bar, a man stands next to a young boy in dungarees sitting on a tall bar stool, making him eye level. The man’s face is repellent; he looks like a guy who models knock-off too-good-to-be-true Chinese t-shirts on online-only stores. He wears a very expensive suit he’s only worn once but has worn for the last two days. The floor is wet but it’s not raining anymore, it reflects in the early hours of a morning.

Man: It’s not cool kid it’s just like breathing. It’s like oil on the hinges. Well looks more like dust, in reality, right? Makes your hunger wet when it’s harsh, like rain does to your hope, or like how leaves feel under your feet. That’s it, leaves under your feet, that’s what it feels like. And it’s not cool it’s just a feeling. I mean some people like it and some people don’t. Most people don’t like pain but some people do like it. I like leaves under my feet because, well, I don’t know why. ‘Cus those leaves came off a tree that grew as many times as it got cut down. Once it got cut down and fell right next to a man’s van who’d gone in there to retreat. He was retreating because he’d forgotten his and his wife’s anniversary well he thought that then looking over the street at his house with all the lights off and old flowers outside of it realised she’d died a few years ago so he must have been in the car because it smelt of the road and his wife used to lay tarmac.

And when that tree crashed down and smashed his left mirror down to the ground. Now that would have meant one thing if he hadn’t had any mayonnaise in the fridge that day and he hadn’t just heard that violent crime has gone down for the first time since Trump got elected ten years back, but he did have mayonnaise and it had gone down so the tree almost killing him tasted sweet. The world was sweet that day. See the effects of right now are full of causes you’ve never heard before, stories are good not ‘cus they make me or you cry but ‘cus they’re making that guy in the car cry, they taste sweet because Mr Helmann first made mayonnaise for his wife’s anniversary and it tasted sweet to her even though it tastes of something else to everyone else. That’s why I can’t tell you why I like the feeling of smoking a cigarette ‘cus I can’t tell you why the leaves feel so good.

Politics is just storytelling, except most people, go for love when they should go for the heart. The heart is full of way more things than just love. And there’s one big fact in this world, the one thing we can all agree on, do you know what that is, kid?

Kid: That the world is sweet?

Man: No, kid, it’s that it begins and it ends. So we need to be showing the people we can write their history. We’re not going for the ones within the massive, we’re going for the massives within the one.

Kid: Mr. I didn’t catch all of that, but if you’d said all of that yesterday, and well, if I was old enough to vote, you would have had my vote, I woulda have to be calling you Mr. President right now.