The Security man

If you worked for the Department of Homeland Security, would you walk around wearing all black, with a walkie talkie strapped to your belt, and the logo of the Department of Homeland Security silk-screened in silver on your ball cap, your lapel, your jacket sleeve, and the back of your jacket? When I ask you how's it going, would you reply "Long as things stay quiet tonight, fine"? Is it the Department's strategy to recruit out of shape and slightly overweight people to mosey through their days dressed like a SWAT team, thereby hoodwinking ever-watching enemies into believing that the Homeland is barren of truly scary defenders? Or would this be an impostor, perhaps a white-supremacist militia member, patrolling a grocery store in Montana where almost everyone's white anyway... I want to know, but this is a story I'm not writing. It's one with only empty space where the next words should be.

Millisecond

The first second a person looks at me, there is an instant of honesty before the curtains draw. I see a woman who is sick of life. I see a guy who is ready to fight with his buddy. The girl in a track suit wishes the cake were hers and not the salad. The soul of the staggering man writes novels but can't maneuver a notebook close enough to spill them into. Then the faces register a spectator, the fabric drops over and the polite smile, the harried endurance, are screened over its thick folds.