July 4, 2015 - Montana Town, Meta Sea
The 2-5am window fume, opens on time. He shuffles on the bent bed and waits for the mix of heat and sweat. The painkillers slowly rise up the starboard side to relieve him of convection textured sheets.
The sun outside the fume is growing perk over the drifting swells.
His skin, the flat bottom of an old space crew return pod, burns with re-entry. His mind, a haze of cross section vectors snapping, lands him into cooling water.
Cutting outside, the rising morning traffic turns to swaying beach pine trees, and he becomes 12 years old. Falling asleep to the lapping pages of Kon-Tiki, that is his raft.
He drifts into Montana Town, through the fume and pass border crossings, on the outskirts, next to the tracks, before the 3rd and 2nd streets that ran parallel to the old main street underneath the drainages.
But this town, which he originated as a spot, marked sign post, somehow a agglomeration of amalgamation was in proximity. That is, while he stood there in the fishing supply store, next to the railroad tracks and big boxes entertaining the drainages and canyons. Looking at a map and talking it over with the owner, sure enough there he was, in Montana. And Montana was right in the middle of the Meta.
The owner pointed south to some minutes or hours, suggesting good fishing around island flumes this time of year. The gas station around the corner, had good sandwiches and ice, if someone was inclined to hungry or thirsty.
Perceiving the fermenting cabbage of his port side, swelling like prespawn, he swallows the painkillers, washing the miniature frogmen down with a can of cold beer.
Checking his watch, 4am, he has another hour before the sun rises and another 24 before the painkillers creep up out of the water on the starboard side and relieve him.
© Matthew Martin All Rights Reserved
