With The Funny Voice and All

Prose by Hector Mukwa Jenkins

With The Funny Voice and All

Longing is long days where the rain waits just long enough for your shift to end. I paid my rent in a weekend opening cans of beer for drunk dads and teenagers. We walked home soaked in booze and ice-water mud.  Jane met me for a bite and a smoke as the sun dipped below Bickford Park. She had an umbrella she refused to use. Said sometimes the storm was better. Rain makes her hair go curly and we've been out so long she'll wake up with a perm. We discussed the song within the song for so long, singing Lay Lady Lay at the top of our lungs. Maybe if Kermit the Frog started smoking cigarettes he would sound like Bob Dylan. We didn't notice them at first, just kids masking horizon light at the top of the dugout. A Roman candle fired east then west then at our heads. Jane yelled and I chased as purple sparks turned the clay ceramic at her feet. She was a spectator as the fireworks cracked fowl in the fence behind me. I was nearly firewood, she was nearly set in stone and we both acted like we weren't frightened. We could hear their laughter.  Just kids lacking empathy burning their fingertips for fun. We walked home on the top of Line 2 wondering if those kids had heard our rendition of Nashville Skyline. After she said we were bonded for life. Stay Lady Stay.

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Hi there, my name’s Hector! 

I’m a young indigenous writer from Ontario, Canada and over the last few years I've been writing songs, poems, stories, and films about where I'm at in life. Sometimes they're happy, sometimes they're sad, mostly they are about people I've met along the way. 

I’m excited to share more writing with the world soon. 

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Common Measure Vol. 1 is in print. Purchase a copy at https://commonmeasure.press/

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