Jason Crane

A Clean Sweep Of Drunken Debris Jason Crane

A girl sobs and yells into the pay phone at Broadway Skytrain station. "Oh God! Please God! Help Me!" Now and then, a word is punctuated by a high throaty squeal, "Please GA... AHHHHD! Help Meeee!" All around her, people rush by, stroll by, talking, laughing, and discussing dinner plans on cell phones. It is a beautiful, sunny Vancouver day. Not too hot and not too cold. And it's only May. She is begging someone on the phone to help her, forgive her, it'll never happen again, she just wants to come home... "Please God, I will do anything, just come meet me at the Skytrain station!" I hear a couple laughing playfully. A radio blares Hip Hop in a nearby restaurant, reverberating in the walls of the stairwell where I am trying to read 'Seasons in Hell' by Rimbaud. But I can't stop listening until whoever is on the other end of the phone agrees to meet her, take her back. I hope, for her sake, that it is better wherever she is going, at least compared to wherever she has been. There is a bastard hand waiting to grab any of us that might fall into its grasp. The sun will still shine over the dead.