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Her hair was a soft brown, in gentle curls, that fell down her shoulders and back. Everyday for three years, he watched a million girls walk by, all trying so hard with painted beauty, projecting a false confidence of allure.   Small bikinis and g-strings that displayed only hardened attitudes, making them less, not more, approachable. The hair tightly pulled from behind, leaving no secrets to be unveiled. She was different, he recognized it immediately. She was unafraid to smile and, why would she be, it was so friendly and warm, it was a smile illuminated by caring brown eyes that revealed a good place. Jimmy didn't think of himself particularly jaded, events just made him wise up faster.   He wasn't quite in the category of a rock star who goes from poor and idealistic on his first album to cynical, caustic and rich by the third album, but he wasn't far off.   Jimmy just believed that people only did the right thing as a last resort, when no other option provided a greater benefit. There wasn't a person who wouldn't hurt you in a heartbeat if it would do them any good. Why then was he standing there completely floored, simply because this girl was smiling at him.   He didn't immediately recognize the feeling, it was buried some place deep, a place he hadn't been to in a long time, but the curl of her lips, her eyes, the warmth of her skin, made him feel peaceful. Wait a minute, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen was standing in front of him and smiling, peaceful was not the first feeling that should rise up inside. But, he couldn't deny it, that's what he felt. It was a feeling so strange, that it made his body shake ever so slightly.
        She was beautiful. She was Italian, petite and demure, with sun-kissed Mediterranean skin, highlighted by deep brown eyes and a gentle cherry red coloring in her lips. She was wearing a pair of off-white shorts, with a flower print bikini top, mostly covered by a white cotton, button shirt, which hung open off her shoulders, gently revealing the curve of her breasts when she moved her shoulders.   Her long brown hair fell briefly across the front of her shirt and down near the center of her back.
        She smiled, waved, looking for some recognition that Jimmy was still plugged in.

Tired, lonely, soaked to the bone on the hardscrabble streets,

but completely resolved in singular purpose,

I follow a star that circles me around

to the end of my beginning, that echoes a strong heart beating off

the walls of the quizzical caverns, with memories of the taste of the

sweet breath of mirrored passion,

with empty roads now sprung to life,

I stand atop the razor's edge of the horizon that always eluded me,

but now, in this moment,

is the firm floor beneath my feet, raising me up to

the edge of the world, where a curled lip, a brush of hair, the

touch of a fingertip keeps me from falling.

He bounced back and forth between sleep-deprived dementia and over-charged electric thoughts. In the middle, in the moments when he was awake and had only one thought, he quickly drowned it or altered his perception. With the world made comfortable by a Herculean effort to make everything seem normal, he would stumble down the alley way in the after hours, find the cellar door and lose consciousness. More than two years had passed in his brilliant stupor, Jimmy was filling out, even with the lack of sleep and eating, the drinking, his body had the resiliency of youth. He was a mannish boy, physically moving on, but his mind was tarred and stuck in the moment of Michael's death. Jimmy had a lean and hungry look that was mistaken for a howl of mimicked rock star wanting, a look of cool detachment. Hunger is hope and desire and craving. Jimmy didn't have hunger, he was being wasted inside. These summer days were perfect reflections, days without borders or definition, rambling nowhere. One no different than the next, casual without demands.