The same rotting stretch of my legs. The long-buried sadness of solitude still rattling in my bones. A dreary music eats its way through my skin, but some days I can hardly hear it.
Today is one of those days. When the burning of the sun does not recoil from the few lanky remnants of tree limbs. When desperation stings as it had the first day I saw the world go quiet. I still try to have a place to go. To go there every day, just so my endless pacing is driven by destination. It happened to be the gray ridden shack where I stationed myself today. The corrugated metal that lines the exterior presses into my back. I sift through my belongings, as I always do. I have very little to lose, and nothing that will come of losing. But I peel the hard skin of a leather bag away, to lay my tried possessions before me in the ruddy earth. My bracelets, which I never wear, but keep just to run the loosened threads about my fingers. To feel something that hasn’t been ripped apart.
And my phone. Miraculously holding on to a four percent charge, running tirelessly as my forgotten life. Worn from sand and time itself, the pressing sun sticking to its bleak exterior washes it dry.
A crumbling vibration stirs to life in my hand, and startles me, causing my head to slam into the metal backings of the shack. Reverberations and vacillations drum together for only a minute until I am sure I cannot bring myself to answer. I cannot draw a slow etched movement to press on the hot glass screen of my phone and hear something other than irreparable dread. The last of its hopeful shudders fall to meet the dead air around it.
Once more I fossilize in silence. Seclusion.
Today is one of those days. When the burning of the sun does not recoil from the few lanky remnants of tree limbs. When desperation stings as it had the first day I saw the world go quiet. I still try to have a place to go. To go there every day, just so my endless pacing is driven by destination. It happened to be the gray ridden shack where I stationed myself today. The corrugated metal that lines the exterior presses into my back. I sift through my belongings, as I always do. I have very little to lose, and nothing that will come of losing. But I peel the hard skin of a leather bag away, to lay my tried possessions before me in the ruddy earth. My bracelets, which I never wear, but keep just to run the loosened threads about my fingers. To feel something that hasn’t been ripped apart.
And my phone. Miraculously holding on to a four percent charge, running tirelessly as my forgotten life. Worn from sand and time itself, the pressing sun sticking to its bleak exterior washes it dry.
A crumbling vibration stirs to life in my hand, and startles me, causing my head to slam into the metal backings of the shack. Reverberations and vacillations drum together for only a minute until I am sure I cannot bring myself to answer. I cannot draw a slow etched movement to press on the hot glass screen of my phone and hear something other than irreparable dread. The last of its hopeful shudders fall to meet the dead air around it.
Once more I fossilize in silence. Seclusion.
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