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.
