Jose Padua: These Down and Out Days in the Land of Everything

You can tell me all you know about love and glue, how body parts fit and rub, wrap around each other like leafy vines, or of hurricane winds blowing out words so loud, so wet you can’t understand what’s being meant. There are seaside towns where the scent of candy fills the air, with fast carnival rides run by gray-faced men who’ve never had to wear a suit at any single point in their lives. But there’s nothing greater and nothing sadder and sometimes nothing else in the world but these accidental, passed-out lovers on a park bench who never meant to touch—though who really knows? One lying on his back, his hair falling down to dirt; the other on top, almost praying, almost singing something other than the blues.

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copyright 2015 Jose Padua

— Photograph by Jose Padua