Posted on 1 Comment on Ethos

Ethos

I always stay too late.
I am always the last to leave,
The one left to taste the soured wine
Passed in frantic effort
To regain the spirit,
Get burnt by the embers
Of hysterical bodies
Trying to rekindle the longspent fire.
Last to leave
And first to come off that high
Brought on by either ethers or ethos
First to sniff the stale smiles that linger
in the air
Long after the fleeting fancy
That brought them has left.
I always leave too late,
And as I totter home,
I am always emptier in the dying hours
Drained from the effort of trying to live.
Posted on 1 Comment on Flash Fiction Friday #35: Rites Of Passage

Flash Fiction Friday #35: Rites Of Passage

First fff written for the new year. (not the first given eh… this one is a good 2 and half weeks old…. but it was hard to find something that wasn’t dirty.…)

 “Drink it nah boy!”
Jason hesitated. The clear liquid in the purple plastic cup stank. In fact, it smelled almost exactly like the methylated spirits his mother had used to clean his grazed knees last month. The same mother who would deliver the spanking, no, it was safe to say he would receive a cut-ass for this, if she found out what he was doing now.
 It all begun when Kwasi, the eldest of their group, decided, thanks to his older brother, that alcohol was what really separated boys from men. So the vodka had been borrowed from someone’s liquor cabinet, and Jason did his part by bringing the plastic cups he knew his mother wouldn’t miss.
 “Yuh ‘fraid or what?” someone goaded.
That was enough. Jason drank it down in one gulp to the whoops and hollers of his friends. The cup was refilled and passed to the next boy, and Jason was once more secure in their ranks, until some new stipulation of manhood was discovered.