I'll be okay if I can walk quietly enough

We paint our mess, and a man and his two young sons walk through, they're taking a shortcut through the closed road. They see us, and don’t say anything, and keep walking. They don’t even acknowledge us or seem to notice. I love them for that, they know. They know what it's like here.

When I see them, I’m sorry I’ve said that this place is mine. I’m sorry, it’s not mine. It’s not anyone’s. You can be here too. The other gangs and crews who have come through and marked it up, they can be here too. SOD, Newhall X3, they’re all welcome. We don’t have beef with anyone. We just want to paint, and destroy, and build. We want to love the dirt and the cracks and the walls, and the trash and the sky and the mountains and hills that surround us, and the weeds. It’s not just ours, it’s yours too, enjoy it with us.

They pass and we’re alone again. We keep going. We pull out more cans until we’re out of black, out of white, and out of colors, and every time we shake the last sputters out of a can we hurl it into the distance and let it sit among the weeds, and every time we finish a beer bottle we hurl it and let it shatter and let the glass settle into the dirt.

There’s paint on our hands and on our clothes. There’s paint everywhere. I can smell the paint. It smells like life, I won’t forget it. Every time I smell it from now on I’ll think of this fucking worthless action we’re doing right now.

ABK.