I knew if I had to do it again, it would be just as before. Now I don’t. The reason for my vacillation is even to me not immediately obvious. I like to see myself as straightforward and a hip-shooter. These days though, nothing seems to me clear, not even me. I say to myself that nothing is going to change me, particularly how my mind works. And I mean it.
Going down is not an option. I wake up this fateful morning with my mind made up. I call my girl and will my all. She asks what she has done lately to deserve so much. I tell her it is fine. She sounds bemused on the phone, but that is all she is going to get, for now.
Then, it is time to make the plunge. Some say my ways are strange. Somehow the laugh inside tickles, my demeanour, yet it remains fixed, what it tells me may actually spread my melancholy even to a child. Yet, my happiness is pure, emanating from an internal peace that defies meaning even to me.
On my way back my eyes survey the scene, just what it tires to see that my mind queries. Just when it seems all is going to be okay, when my zest for life appears to be back in force, when my eyes seem to focus sharper, and my mind is ready to dream again. Almost turning back, the arch of a landmark that seems to attract would-be escapists something tells me to be at times seems so beautiful that my mind sinks. Perhaps it would be the ultimate thrill it occurs to me, even as my pace quickens to safety.
When my phone rings the tendency is to dismiss the call that may be the seal on my fate, which at that moment happens to be still fluid, never mind I tell her at the end of the brief call that my favourite sandwich would help right now. She shrugs it off, knowing as somewhat me too that what it really means is unachievable anytime soon. I shuffle on, in my mind, after promising that something keeps snapping, about which, to my momentary dismay, she again, seems blasé.
For some reason, he approaches me and begs me to steal his identity. It is just too soon after my pain to face another challenge. To be sure, my bent is not to filch but as if he senses my mind, this time it is unlike. The intensity of an ogle by one that lives on the streets never should prompt me to change my whole perspective just so to grease my ego, to prove something to myself that does not make sense anyway.
To make matters worse, having willed my all hours earlier, that we may just as well be swapping places seems real, even if our intentions are doubtless dissimilar. Providence makes valuable lessons too, reliance on which may turn out to be valuable, albeit sometimes hard to figure, more so by someone seeking answers to the reasons for being so insolvent, emotionally.
Not that nothing transpires during such a fateful encounter, my discovery soon after that the proposition is a farce, an experiment my mind naively walks into as often as such faces me in an event that presents a chance my eyes seek to launch actions that boggle my mind. To start to show my gratitude to who turns out to be the city mayor for opening my eyes to their flaws beats me as again, my feet do not let me down promptly leaving the scene.
Now my goal is to be home, fast. Wrong. Two minutes into my homeward mind, it snaps again. This time, it is a child. For a moment, something tells me to chat with her, then another, not to. Just before the decision manifests, her mother pulls her away. After walking a mile into the city and my weakness compels me to stop, actually to sit on a bench, gazing, just gazing, and then stopping to catch myself, my eyes perhaps must see what my mind says.
That face looks like her, but it is that of a child. To save myself more agony, the hope of soon being in cozy comfort, knowing someone is going to be there to heal my soul, my strength returns, but the child flashes through from time to time, my eyes. Then, my girl tells me not to worry, that her dream is real, even if just what it is, and that her mother loves us, always, in my mind.
It must be that it never sticks that someone does, not even when it is so clear that what my eyes see continues to boggle my mind, to entrench my thoughts in a vision from which the distinction between my worlds seems so blurred, so out of step with my mind, yet soothes it so much that my peace is real, that my happiness is pure.
My front door looks different. It seems to have a plaque on it. Where it comes from is a mystery, although it is not at all to my mind that it feels good this time. It is a game my mind plays on my eyes, to reassure itself about their wayward ways, to secure my happiness, my peace. The plaque fades away the nearer my hands to reach it, to caress the words that confront yet comfort me even as tentatively as they say they mean what my eyes see now.
Soon the door flips open, and my hands freeze with joy. Still outstretched, they feel nothing, even as they grope, lifeless to know what they have to hold as my eyes stay focused on the emptiness beyond, telling me to wait for something to emerge to show me the way. So the wait goes on, to reveal the world to me yet again, for my mind to see whence it heads. Then there she is, again, her immaculate white chiffon wet, lifting me up, as my knees buckle at her feet, telling me to hold tight, and that all will be well.
