The darkness swept in at the end of the day, like an ocean wave. Swell after swell came and wave after wave pummeled the sand and shells below, but as fast as they came, they just as quickly trickled back to the depths from which they came and the day would come back as alive as ever.
The day was active and moving, but boring it was. All the creatures that inhabited the planet skittered and crawled about without a clue to what life really meant and as I sat back in the shadows for fear of touching the light of the sun.
Failure I once was and failure I still am. The old and tired milk crate I sat on was even too great for me as it started falling apart to leave the sight of my crippled face and my broken life. The support beams ripped themselves off without the slightest of clue of the destruction they were causing.
The breaking of the milk carton continued every second that the sun was up in the sky; the pain was ever too real. It felt like my body was being constantly stamped with burning metal and my mind and soul crushed by the realization of my failures.
But it all went away, surely but truly as night struck and the moon overtook the abating sun. The alley I sat in was squeezed between two brick buildings and it became larger every time darkness arisen.
My legs went from stiff cardboard to flexible spandex, finally able to move again. I walked down the street at nighttime, my eyes and face covered at all times, I would not want anyone to see the ugliness that persists inside the wrappings.
The hankering of fate led me to where I belonged and supposedly was meant to be: a small soup kitchen for the homeless and forgotten.
The kitchen was packed as tight as it could, a full house had gathered tonight, the few tables and chairs, usually steadily available, now taken and longed to someone else. The food was gone also and another man starved.
I was forced to leave, but not by my own will, but by my own crippled and battered heart that didn’t know the difference between right and wrong or left and right.
What need would I be? To whom? To where? The pain inside was now insurmountable and it would be foolish to think that it would suddenly go away like a bad memory.
The streets are a lonely place. The only thing that is even out is me, some of the street lights had even given out and gone home for the night. I walked past apartment buildings with people inside, cheering and screaming about something irrelevant to the realm of actuality.
I kept walking and walking and walking…
A bridge is not afraid of heights, so why should I be? I stood on top of it admiring and resenting the sight I saw: lights, city, and a world where I was unimportant and uncounted for.
Days would come, nights will go, and down the river, my body will hopefully peacefully flow.