The Walk

The sky heaved and folded into purples, in that last gasp of light before blackness. He walked with his hand uneasy, clenched and lingering towards the fabric of his pocket, and a tactile blindness struck his creped, knotted skin. Street lamps incinerated, their arrival virtually unnoticed, and breathless summer evening air hung low around his face, suffocating his skin, sticky with dense beads of oily sweat. A chorus of boisterous boys rushed by, always going somewhere, home for dinner from playing ball, their own existence as of yet unquestioned, untarnished by the death march of time. One nearly bumped into the old man, but he looked away and up into the sky’s violet blanket, slowing closing in on him, he knew... he knew. Distant jazz poured into the languid air, a muted trumpet’s frenetic notes scaling over traipsing cymbal brushes. Maybe it’s a bit like the night we met.

His fumbling fingers stumbled inside his drooping pocket, like an eager young lover on a bra strap’s clasp, a blind rumble of touch, til he found the photo’s smooth well-worn edges. He daren’t pull the photo out of his pocket, and continued his trek uptown. Pigeons purred low in his eardrums and bodega bells rattled against glass and life went on, as it would go on long after he was gone. Soon and so what? A fat Italian swept brownstone front steps with melodramatic sweeps and people rushing against the old man turned into cardboard. A woman’s lipsticked laugh sounded from afar, and leathery gum and stale, flattened cigarette butts pushed into his shoes, his gait becoming slower, his left leg dragging. No, he didn’t dare look at her photo.

And I knew I’d be safer at home. Where I could cry... yeah right. But it didn’t seem the way to end things. I would walk and keeping walking to God knows where. He grimaced and the thick lines around his mouth hung heavy. His fingers now fumbled towards the letter, the paper stained and worn soft as suede, disintegrating almost, except for the imprint of ink: the words he wanted to say, to send, and to feel. And somehow he would reach her - dark eyes reading the words, her lashes darting across and down and around the lines and punctuation, his thoughts being transported into the precious valleys and hills of her mind.

The old unsent paper, shreds upon shreds unravelling between charred, hooked fingernail, and his chest grew tighter as grocery store paper bag mothers dawdled around him and life went on and on... yet inside he was dying; his tragedy felt as unique as it did mundane. He imagined her half-moon eyes, dancing pools of desire... There was so much I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you about the way the light hit your cheek that night, and how after that, nothing else much mattered to me. Unsent... all black ink and feeling laid out in words - symbols - to forever ache in the curve of his hand. No, he didn’t dare look at her photo.

The church spire ahead spat into the sky, black, piercing like a needle into the vein. He knew it was time. The photo - her raven hair piled over glowing forehead and cat eyes and pout. One last glimpse pulled at him, a magnetic tug drawing him into the earth. I don’t know how to unwrap or understand this pain: it stands, sealed inside of me... rigid, a tense statue of failed longing. Time couldn’t be held, and he wanted to go back, and roll it into a ball and hold it safe somehow, but the sides began to spill out of his hands as each passing moment disappeared into the next like a flicker of her eyes or slip of the tongue. And oh, how he screwed up. And the years sat on him, unmoving, and death would be the release.

His feet dragged to the church steps, drowning in city filth. The photo is a crystallized moment. Her laugh. The memory is a crystallized moment in the stream of consciousness. Oh God when will it end. Her eyes. Electric shock crackles through his chest; the pigeons flutter away. He falls against the jag of the steps and colours spill out of sequence through his brain as the final detachment of light crashes.

Somewhere, in a kitchen, a grey tendril of hair falls against her cheek, and suddenly clammy, a dish slips out of her hand, splaying into white fangs. She shrugs.