He stalks steadily in the city, as flakes swirl in abundant showers. There is a slight fault in the silence that he quickly brushes off, trudging quietly on wet ground, shielding interest and effectively breathing in the collective subterfuge. One of many. Blending in with a composed expression, he meanders around bodies of warm and cold, keeping his hands to himself and holding on to that slip of light - that slip of heaven and promise folded in blissfully hushed tones. Phone booths are occupied, conversation is concise, and he seems to be doing good, but not good enough. He tries.
He sifts through gangs of people, leafing through them and pursing his lips, stoic blue eyes shining ever so lightly. The city blinks in pale colors. Skyscrapers tower intimidatingly, cars languidly maneuver and pass by, and a laugh or a snicker or a sigh may be heard from time to time. A gale of giggles bursts like jack-in-the-box at one point, and his eyes flicker to a blur of bright red faces to the nearest lamppost, seeing the light emanate in slow blinks. He starts to fasten his pace in bigger steps and avoid as much eyes he would like to evade, and he can still feel the sliver of light in the palm of his hand, curling around his frigid fingers, dancing on the tips. A pall stretches and hunches over the chit-chat of the streets, blowing in shorts of breath, shuddering across glass cases, and reaching in the corners of a funnily ordinary morning.
He, in fact, likes the mundane routine of it - the lack of excitement, the slackness of everyone around him, the tour of people as a river flowing through the city - because the reality of it just beckons for the hidden truth, so there's exponentially more potential things to do, no doubt. More excitement for him, all right. And the snow keeps falling perfectly on his hoodie and his shoes, concealing him in the absence of colors even more. He has stopped moving around and is standing by the door of a motel when the wind spares a kiss on his cheeks, and it's time to postpone on everyone's parade.
Darkness immerses everyone in an embrace. It isn't as comforting. Instead, it hovers and clothes in tides of murmurs, like the whole presentation of dark is esoteric. Because it might as well be and it might tend to be. A foliage of twinkling stars replace the clouds of snow, and he can feel the struggle and panic of everyone, so he sends a melody out into the dark city. With one hand, he colors a page with reveries of circus visits and weekend picnics, blending the pleasures with inks of dancing in the rain and slumber parties. The dark wavers a little so he leans back against the motel's dry facade. Then, with the other hand, he drums a little beat on his heart, and in a moment dark is life - not death - when his laugh trickles over his lips and falls into splashes of consequences. The hollow feeling of the darkness is now gone, replaced by a sense of something there that circles everyone in happy introductions. A friend in the gloom of the process of secrets.
The storm is almost shaking off. He looks up at the stars. In a quick flourish of a hand, a star jumps off from its cubicle, shooting off in insane directions like how an elephant reacts to the mere presence of a mingling mouse. He offers his hand up to the black ceiling, and catches the tiny little thing before it shoots off into an eternal distance he himself couldn't risk speeding up to. The interstice between the stars - as he has been taught - is an internal thing when it comes to doing the job of keeping reality closer to fantasy, but he enjoys the zap of a star against the boundaries of dark rooms, and of dark imagination, so he finds a star in lieu of developing one. It twinkles readily on the palm of his hand before funneling down into a gleam in the eye, and he allows himself a smile of content among all this.
He passes a beatific dream across the walls, tightening his fingers around the clasps of veins. With the star transmitted into both his hands, he heaves the power of numbness into the impervious brick walls of the dark, and soon he hears everyone's strained sounds of panic dwindle into momentary confusion, then dizziness. The darkness is blanching. With a twist, a manageable rectangle of the wall turns into a door, and he rummages in a typhoon of supplies to get what he needs. Brandishing a drenched clump of ruined letters from the halcyon days... or years, he uses up a bit more effort to close the door and seal it again.
He does, and before the remaining waves of the dark empty into a speck in space, he clashes with a couple of do-it-yourself stars and draws a thin veil over the brimming majority of them. The sky of stars transforms into still flakes in a beat. And all the letters - they fly out of his hands in paper airplanes and plaster over the dark. They all manage to cover everything up, some excessively toppling over others, but that's okay.
With a hand's run across space, reality is completely risen once again, and the numbness and the panic are nowhere to be found. But the boy is not in our presence anymore; he has gone off to follow up on imperative deadlines.
Only people in the city are recorded this day, but with more music, kissing snow, and love and family letters read over steaming cups. The phone booths are no longer occupied because people now have what they were once missing.
The flakes fall more sluggishly through the air in artful spirals.
No comments:
Post a Comment