Walking to the Bus

He stands like just another dumb motherfucker on an empty sidewalk, but he starts to walk and walks like no one else, without intent, without a place he's looking forward to get back to, with no thoughts of the future.  The few cars driving by are like furtive words of a whispered conversation, and though he never looks up, he is listening.  They are talking about him; they have the side of his head and his full attention.  He drags his weight with every step, rough and jerking, twitching like his legs are spent, like a junkie shiver.  It's cold enough to turn the streets to a black shimmer and make the stars shine all the brighter.  But he carries his jacket in a ball between his arms and his heart like that space is the only thing worth keeping warm.  His palms rest just out of his pockets, cold and white as the dusty snow spinning in the wind.  His fingers are as stiff as broken bones, or a man who has never been given a chance to set.  But the pavement has to be contracting – how else could he have gotten so far?  He lights a cigarette with the solemnity of a blind man.  His ashes are covering a lot of ground.  Sirens flash by and he thinks of freedom.  A green light bloodies every last part of him and he thinks of freedom.  The wind cuts the paper of his will to pieces and he thinks.  He thinks of leaving, and realizing that that would imply a feeling of being somewhere, he keeps on going.  Now and then he turns his head and walks to the threshold of the street.  He sees a lot that looks promising, that is to say expectant and disappointing.  He's firmly back on the concrete.  He keeps walking that sine wave pattern out, and its frequency begins to increase with every few steps.  Step. Another step.  Step step.  He looks back.  Walks back.  In a few steps.  Looks back again.  But he doesn't bother walking back again.  Foot lining up after foot like a kid playing on a ledge of imagined magnitude.  But suddenly he hears what he's been waiting for: a roaring of his name just faint enough to be doubtful, but intense enough for him to be certain he is being called.  It carries that one sound obstinately, growing louder, never pausing for breath even as he begins to hyperventilate.  Behind the crawling roar is a burning face and he looks at it like an old friend rekindling a dead friendship.  One foot is off the street.  The other is walking away screaming.  He goes right into the middle of it all, into the focus, the center of that slick black scene, all lines converging on him.  He grins in the face of the monster rolling towards him.  He'd wanted an audience.  He'd wanted people to remember him, to remember the man who carved himself into the demon so that it would forever remember him in hell.  The demon carrying its passengers to their next stop doesn't.  It spins on, closer.  He closes his eyes and drops his jacket onto the street.

    He feels like Jesus being pulled into a black hole.
    Crucified, paralyzed, hands like railroads
    as God grows larger into view with a look to
    tear you a new one, spin you around, grab you
    by the head and take your crown, take your cross
    and from the twanging of your dripping, empty heart
    rip your soul from the blasted still coldness
    that was your body.
    Stop.

    Does he really want to go through with this?  The bus slams into him.  He feels the metal fold around him in the tightest embrace he has ever known.  The bright red of light filtered through blood and eyelids is all he sees.  And then something changes in the air.  It feels warm as it's rushing past.  The steel grip releases his arms and grabs onto his legs.  But it's slipping.  There is no sound but a cacophony, noise so incredibly loud and intimate that it's more arresting than silence.  Then silence.  Then darkness.  The usual darkness that against which all fears, all hopes, all desires, all the thoughts that create a mind are nothing but the promise of distant stars.  He opens his eyes.  In the distance: cars.