To the Undelivered

He had been there before; sitting in the tattered, vinyl seat of his '92 Camry. From years of the same old routine one of the springs had torn through the left side of what remained of the bottom cushion and was poking at his leg. The car was now going on its eighteenth year and it was beginning to show. The dashboard was cracked and faded, and at each corner parts of the speaker cover had begun to break apart, fall onto the rotted speaker below and from time-to-time made a low rattling noise that could be heard in the background as he listened to Drake and Zeke in the morning. There was a large starfish shaped crack in his windshield where the rear view mirror was. It had served as an outlet for his anger from an argument he and his wife had on the way back from a trip a few years earlier. He never got it replaced; not because he didn't have the money, but because it was a reminder of how enraged he could sometimes get. The day that it happened he learned a little bit about himself, but now it was the furthest thing from his mind. He was aware of and often thought about these things, but they seemed to fill his mind. Strange, random, and often inappropriate things. Where did they come from? What were their origins? Why did he obsess over them? He had his own ideas about what caused this bizarre behavior, but hadn't had the time to put them on paper. They would have to wait again because the only thing that mattered was right there.
The rancid black cloud pouring from the eighteen-wheeler in front of him was filling the cabin of his beater as they sat deadlocked in another I-240 traffic jam. It was early August and temperatures were expected to reach 100+ that day and there was no doubt in his mind that they would. There's just something about the combination of humidity and heat in Memphis that although it was expected every year just never got any easier to bear. It can kill a man and it has. During those hottest summers it was not uncommon to hear reports of yet another heat casualty. And why should it be? Once he himself had passed out on a hot summer day from trying to accomplish to much in the yard without being mindful of the thermostat. It’s strange, passing out, the only thing he would remember is the darkness closing in from both sides until it was as if he was looking through one end of a cardboard tube and could see only the things on the other end until they too succumbed to the darkness and that was it. As he sat there he could feel the now drooping headliner of his car flickering the top of his head as it whipped in the breeze of the luke cool air blowing out of his dusty vents. This absurd attempt at cooling himself was by no means an effective way to escape the scorching heat that day. The pavement had taken on that effect where if you catch a glimpse of it at just the right angle everything beyond looks fuzzy from the blistering heat radiating off of the petroleum soaked black desert. Besides trying to forget about the inevitable reaming he could expect as soon as he arrived to work that day he was trying to relax so that he would not brew up anymore sweat than what had already begun to turn his collar yellow. Just at that moment a monarch butterfly, glorious in all its splendor, came bobbing across the bleak landscape in front of him. For a moment the insect came in to his day carrying with it a nimbus of beauty that made its presence explode in front of him drowning out everything else that had filled his mind that morning. As his eyes followed its every move he reveled in its intricacies. He noticed how the wings with their black veins running over an orange canvas reminded him of a stained glass window. Even when the light from a setting or rising sun shone through those luminescent panes it held no comparison to the perfection that fluttered before him. Every time he had a moment to stare astonished at such a spectacle it only strengthened his belief in an ultimate divinity. Surely the Creator took great care and consideration in designing every gift he has given us. As he sat transfixed on this moment of joy it suddenly whisked upward unable to control itself in the billows of black, suffocating gases that now consumed it and as quickly as it had livened his spirits it now lie lifeless intermingling with the debris and trash that so often collected along the road side. Now it was nothing more than a lifeless something that once made him feel alive. It was dead and so was he. Once again he was back in his body. He was back in that heat. He was back to the place from which the gift had for a moment rescued him. He was back to the misery; sweat gathering at the back of his legs, beading on his forehead, and soiling what once was a clean body.