Blacktop Wasteland

by S.A. Cosby

Progress had left this part of town behind. It was abandoned just like the store. A blacktop wasteland haunted by the phantoms of the past.

He didn’t really dwell on it too much. A mistake is a lesson, unless you make the same mistake twice.

That was the thing about his mother. She could be emotionally manipulative one minute then making you laugh the next. It was like getting hit in the face with a pie that had a padlock in it.

Explanations were like assholes. Everyone has one and they are all full of shit.

The thing about loving someone was that they knew all your pressure points. They knew all the spots that were open and raw. You let them into your heart and they cased the place.

“Listen, when you’re a black man in America you live with the weight of people’s low expectations on your back every day. They can crush you right down to the goddamn ground. Think about it like it’s a race. Everybody else has a head start and you dragging those low expectations behind you. Choices give you freedom from those expectations. Allows you to cut ’em loose. Because that’s what freedom is. Being able to let things go.

“We always gonna be trash, Ronnie. Money ain’t gonna change that,” Reggie said. Ronnie opened his mouth to offer a rebuttal to Reggie’s assertion but none was forthcoming. The truth had a strange way of ending an argument.