The Love of Three Bills

You lean stiffly against the mud-spattered hood of the car

your dilated eyes dart across every space recoiling from the light of the station

Never concentrated in one single place for more than four

But the harsh green neon light assures, and with your luck

Out comes your colleague from the convenience store

He nods to the car and you light a brittle cigarette

You both take skittish steps into the truck

Uttering a quick prayer for the old weak cashier

The desperate stillness carries the length of the highway

And it terrifies you to look

So instead of searching the eternal eyes of the abyss

You squint at your sandpaper hands and think of home

Sketch their faces in your mind

Because it scares you more to forget their smooth faces

And their golden laughs

And your promise that you would come back with their future

But their youth is torn by the rapid fire of bullets

From behind you and you quickly realise that he has to

Stop! Stop the car. They’ll only want the money

And so he abruptly skids the truck to the right,

away from the hauntingly idle highway and into the merciless woods

Because he has a wife, maybe children too

The motorbike leisurely halts

They know,

time has a way of planting a slow distress in your frantic heart

Even before you see their shadowed faces or their loaded guns

Once your colleague choppily rolls the window down the hooded man shrieks

Cusses at you with piping ferocity

You both shakily give the little money you earned but it’s not enough

Before you can do anything your colleague’s brains are caked on your face

Grey and clumpy

You never even learned his name

So you start wailing

But soon its over-mounted by the whining of a police car

And the thump of the thug’s unstained body onto the grass

You tell him the truth, blubbering

The three bills clenched in your whitening hands

Thanking God for his modest face

until the officer calmly aims his pistol at you

and gives you just four

To put anything worth quetzales into the hat before your brains

Are out your skull too

He leaves chuckling

You sob helplessly and stare into the hungry eyes of the abyss

This time more afraid