The Moon as My Witness

By rashod berkley

If only my feet could keep up with my spinning head and this twirling light on the ceiling circling around the halos of those smarter than me. Too bad my throat couldn't keep up either; too weak to hold back the rush of this afternoon's servings along with the storm of words that spit on the foreheads of those who now have blurred faces.

"Leave me the fuck alone. I'm. Going. Home. No, I don't live too far away. No I… no, no. What? That doesn't even make sense. I'm gonna get lost? Psssh, going to my own house? It's called my own house, motha fucka," I giggled.

All the rose powdered cheeks dancing in front of my unbalanced tunnel vision made me sick. I had to get out of there but the drunker I got the weaker my potential strength got, mentally and physically. They kept holding me back and I exhausted my will to step forward. So I pounced myself on the near by sofa, so fluffy the fire in my eyes died down as the cushion made me bounce, and the smirk of a once happy six year old in his birthday jumper appeared on my face and I laughed with joy. Everyone seemed confused, thinking I was some psycho ready to hurt someone, but how did they not know the resemblance between the couch and my birthday. That pissed me off and I blew out my nose the frustration I had, but the fire in my eyes caught the wind of that frustration and I was hot again, cursing at whomever it was targeted in my tunnel vision.

"Rashod, Calm down. Why are you so mad at everybody? We did nothing to you; we're trying to help you and you're just being an-"

"Blah, blah, blah. So fucking what I'm being an asshole; you're a stupid bitch

anyways. Why the fuck would I want to be nice to a stupid bitch, you're stupid."

"You know what, just let him walk home."

I didn't want to leave as much anymore, but those once rose powdered cheeks

became flamed jaws and I sensed I was unwanted. I felt another mesh of derogatory

words scratching up my throat, but what she had said sobered me up, and a bolt of reality struck me in the gut and I wanted to release my feelings through my tears, but I resisted

from looking like a fool and decided to do what I had intended to do- leave.

I paced my way out fumbling over uneven carpet but was in no rush because in

the faces of those who had tried to help, I wanted to see in their eyes the understanding of me just being drunk, but all they gave were cold stares and perked lips. Walking to the front door I could feel the disconnection between me and everyone else, me against all. I opened the door expecting a cold breeze to rush me, but this was no sad story. Instead I tapped my shirt pocket to feel for my iPod, hoping I wasn't too drunk to notice if it had fallen out at the party. I would have been too embarrassed to go back and look for it. I felt the lump in my shirt and I was feeling better about myself. I untangled the earphones thinking about how the hell they got like that in the first place, but it just sent the stars above my head twirling even faster. Too drunk to think of a song myself, I praised the saint who invented the shuffle feature and it fed the perfect song for the moment. I grinned at the yelps of trumpets and listened as the voices of angels brightened their notes. I looked up at the moon for its sanction, nodded my head, and I started my journey.

In the midst of darkness every thing seemed to have become so clear. There's something about taking on a naked world, where all who can aid you have groped their pillows and where the only reliance is that of yourself, that pulses your true inner being. It brings the time where disguising your true identity becomes weak, for there is no one to fool anymore. Alone, you take things for what they are. A bush is no more an innocent green that you ignore while walking with friends, but is now a malevolent gray under the night that is the home to rats and raccoons that claw at ankles if not careful. A tree is no more a spot for shade, but now an obstruction of the little light needed to guide you through the dark. And I was no longer the same rashod; I was now a person with nothing to hold in, because all that was there had escaped. I felt liberated.

Chest up, I took long strides to the middle of the street. I stared down the hill and approximated my way to get to a familiar side of town. I tilted my head having no clue where to begin my journey, so I thought downward for a start would be good. Walking down the hill annoyed me because I had to hold my weight with every step that staggered my knees one after another for what seemed thirty minutes. Still staggering down, I held my middle fingers up to both sides of the street, sending a message to each and every house because in my mind I believed they were the households of the type of rich that annoyed me. It wasn't because they had money; it was more the fact that money was all they had. To the left I could see that a couple had just gotten home. The previous me would have quickly hidden the message to these easily read beings, but my escaped obscurity held my hands up strong. Their tarnished expressions gawked at the strange me, but what we had in common was the hot animosity that condensed our souls to liquid and unleashed our hard feelings.

"Hey, is there a problem here?" said the husband.

I didn't reply. It was quite self explanatory to a drunken me. I'm flipping you off,

there for I find there's something wrong with you. And from the looks of the dirt in my

finger nails and your coddled manicures, the hostility among us is ambiguous to you?

I'll let him dwell on it.

"Hey, I'm talking to you buddy," he slurred, another thing that was quite obvious.

"I understand that, sir," I looked directly into his dilated pupils, something else we had in common. I wanted it to feel as sarcastic as the "buddy" in his statement was.

"Stupid teen hippies these days; all they do is smoke pot and think they're on top of the world," he muttered to his wife.

I didn't respond, but I thought of what he said and couldn't argue. When I'm high I do feel like I rise above world (in a sense). But then I reconstructed the sentence. Stupid rich people; all they do is get money and think they're on top of the world. So who was at fault? I put my hands down. I continued my journey.

Long striding down streets that seemed to have been going down but kept turning and halting at dead ends, I felt that night may not be the one where I grope my pillow, but a nearby bench. What kept me motivated was the thought that I would have to sleep in this small venue I had not known, where the wind soared with breezes of woe and where the aluminum doors to houses were ice cold. So I kept on, but then my music came to a sudden stop. I looked at the screen to see that it was now dark like the night. I tried to turn it back on, having the false hope that there was still a little more juice left in it, but the screen showed an empty battery then returned black. I sucked my teeth and rolled my earphones up. I needed something to guide me through.

I had to pee and found the perfect white gate that was tall and tried to show superiority, but I knew yellow, perhaps gold fit it best. I pulled down the upper part of my pants and exhaled, shook, and spat on it. Something stopped me though. I never noticed the beauty in the sound of spitting; maybe because there were no other sound waves to interfere. I did it once more. I could hear how the spit got more and more distant from my lips, like a car, and I did it again. I was making music, which essentially what music is, random noises, and I simulated the bass with it, then a mockery of turn tables, and oh lord, I started to rap. I forget what I was rapping about, but I believe it was somewhat degrading. Being drunk, there was no will to preach about change and positivity, or at least in a respectable manner.

I staggered some more down the hill jolly and loud like a giant. I looked up to the left and saw that the moon had been following me and my ramble to a better place. I had a fan, and it gave me a warm numbness in my chest to know that that night someone was there for me.

I halted. I was at the freeway and if I were to back-track, I would have walked up the hill for about fifteen minutes. The will to give up tired my feet and I looked up at the moon for its sanction again. It gave me a bland look and I stared the entrance to the freeway down; it gave a frail look. I looked to see if the street had led anywhere else but saw nothing and blew out a nervous wind. Well, I guess I can walk the freeway. I wouldn't have to walk very far and at this time there wouldn't be many cars. I spat once more and kept on with my journey. Oh, that beautiful sound.

I crept to the point where the reach of the harmless street touched the crest of an

untrustworthy freeway. I stopped to give it one more look and stared down what now looked like the bed of a black sea, calm but deceitful. I turned around once more to take my last glance of the neighborhood and was reminded of the birth of my liberation, as its thick fume eroded down the hill and past me to surface the freeway and guide me home. I felt better about walking the freeway but for some reason the doubt wasn't fully exempt from my mind. I took my first step, and a paralyzing shock swiftly made its way up my thighs and squeezed my spine, but it was only momentary. The second resulted in the same but less severe, and by time I got to the third it ran out of juice and I was off on my mission.

I walked the far side of the freeway and occasionally looked back for cars. Whenever they would pass, a series of raised eyebrows and shoulders would zoom by, but I was indifferent. Up ahead on the other side of the freeway I could see that a man's car had broken down and he leaned on the hood with his cell phone and a little girl in the back. His red car passionately illuminated underneath the freeway lights, and when I looked away, for a split second the brightness carried on in my sight. I saw that he was able to spot me and although we shared nods, the moment was unusual. There he was with a car stranded in the palm of the freeway, and here I was on foot with my exit right ahead of me. I looked ahead again with my brightened vision and smiled looking at my exit. I strolled to the point where the reach of the trustworthy freeway touched the crest of a familiar street.

The closer I got to home, the more sober I got, the less liberated I felt, and the more its fume died down. My chest curved down and my knees were feeling weak. I now was walking in a venue of clustered air and warm doors due to the hot tension in scrambled households. I saw that down here were people who ignored their pillows and made love to park benches underneath the spot light of street lights. I sauntered in disappointment. I thought back on my whole journey and not once did I think about where, after all I had encountered, I would end up. I just knew I had to leave, but where I ended up was no better than where I started.

61^st, 62^nd, 63^rd, 64^th, 65^th, I turned down. Since there weren't very many cars that

ran down my street, I decided to walk down the middle. The way the street lights on both sides of the street frowned down upon me made me feel uneasy. Out of a nearby bush, a raccoon spurted out down to the gutter on the other side. It looked as if it swallowed the raccoon, and I tried to avoid them. I had heard that if you made noise, raccoons would recognize it and hide away; so like anybody, I started to whistle.

In the distance I could see my moms car in the driveway, and I got excited to know that I was finally going to reunite with my dreams.

The whistling died out when I had to catch my heart as I nearly coughed it out of my mouth. I seemed to have become drunk again. My sight became tunnel vision at the mob of predatory gorilla faces that stared in silence at a boy trying to swallow back his heart, and my brain stumbled numb on the reality that I was face to face with agitated guerillas. My body froze, not knowing how to react, and I saw one get up from leaning on his car.

"Where you from blood?"

"I live down the street," I knew that wouldn't help because I had just moved there. "I aint ever seen you around. Fred, you ever seen this nigga around?"

"Naw, where he say he was from?"

I felt there was no reason to explain; no way to try to get myself out of this

situation, it just had to happen. They all got up one after another and marched toward me. Underneath the moonlight, I looked up at heads with bright linings around them that looked so heavenly; their faces furious but it had no value. The moon sat there above us watching and out of nowhere came the rush of my liberated fumes being sucked into the noses of those who deeply inhaled as they stomped their feet into my chest. When it was over, I got up and they shoved me back down.

"Don't bring yo ass back down here walking in the middle of the street like you own it or some shit."

Walking home I felt empty again. Relieved of the stress that these two communities had brought upon me because I was able to cope with myself. The night becomes less dark when loose knuckles become firm grips- firms grips on yourself, that may, in a shameful set of hands, slip away in the sweaty rivers of scared palms. I reached my door and looked up once more and saw that the moon had been looking down on me. It asked for my sanction, I nodded, and let the day begin.