Page 92 of Broken Chorus

Mashing the button on his phone, Hawk was shocked to see that the whole morning had flown by while he’d been wool gathering and thinking about the surprise he had cooked up for Aaron once they got back from Rocktoberfest.

“Damn,” Hawk muttered as he tucked the phone back into his pocket. “I didn’t realize how much time had passed.”

“Yeah, you burned it up good,” Cade remarked.

Soon they reached the spot beneath a gnarled Joshua tree where Declan and Aaron sat with the kids around them, each with their own spots and crayons so no one could accuse anyone else of using the color they wanted. It was a brilliant setup, and they hardly glanced up when he arrived, they were so content with what they were doing. Hawk found himself wishing he’d brought some ice water ‘cause damn, just that little walk had left him even sweatier than he’d been before. Cade leaned against the tree a few feet from his brother, eyes drifting to half-mass as he listened to the notes rolling out of Aaron’s guitar, while Declan sat nodding and tapping away on his tabletop electric drums.

“I hear we’ve been summoned to a concert,” Hawk said as he dropped onto the blanket beside Aaron, who stopped playing and fiddled with one of the strings.

“Something like that,” Declan said. “We’ve got something we’d like you guys to listen to.”

Nodding, Hawk and Kelly got comfortable and waited to hear what they’d come up with.

“It’s umm, it’s not meant to be fast. It’s not a ballad either…it’s just…” Aaron stammered, blushing a little until Hawk wrapped an arm around him and pressed their heads together, reminding him to relax, that no one out here was going to judge what he’d created.

It pissed Hawk off to no end that the brief time he’d spent in his grandparents’ presence had caused Aaron’s self-confidence to plummet further then it had already been.

“Ready for you to play it,” Declan encouraged. “So, let’s hit this.”

It was all the nudging and encouragement that Aaron needed. He started strumming out the intro, with Micah falling in beside him, and damn did those twin guitars sound haunting as they echoed over the desert, especially when Aaron began to sing.

Stoned streets at dawn

Emerald pavements undulating with restless movement

The denizens and the damned all hurly-whirly mixed together

A macabre dance of pleasure and pain

Jaded eyes shimmer dollar bill green

Basking in the glow of capitalism

The meaning of life measured in yields and gains

Lies roll off forked tongues as easily as rivers grow

Creep over their banks after heavy rains

Drown in the silt and silk

Unable to sort the muck from the logic

Seeking threads of light in vast expanses of darkness.

Rise reborn slip on fake snake skins at dawn

Electric snake skins to go out and play in

Blinking at the sun like it burns

It all burns while we slither

Slinking through vast caverns of the human mind

Into caves we never tap into

Dormant and all but forgotten

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