Post by Ross on Dec 31, 2013 19:57:20 GMT -8
The chain-link fences were crisscrossed with black and yellow Caution tape, making me think of hornets, and pain. Tails of the stuff flittered in the wind, as though struggling to break free from their fate.
Behind it all was a crater, where a building had once been. Cut just short of its hundredth birthday, it hadn't been the tallest, or the biggest, or the most famous. But it had been ours. And it was gone, now.
The crater was a tomb; a reliquary of the way the world was before, and a reminder of all that the future would not possess.
I stood there, in the dark, looking at it for a long minute. Looking at the absence.
Lighting a cigarette, I took a pull so hard that the ember ached from the effort. Stepping to the fence, I pushed a stream of smoke out into the void, watching it disperse above the crater before fading away.
It had invaded a point in space that it could not have hoped to penetrate only a couple of months ago. That thought alone sent me deeper.
"Change," I muttered to no one.
I took another drag, and turned away.
Plywood made for lousy bandages on all the wounds left behind by the storm, and Pioneer Square had been practically mummified. I headed north up 2nd Avenue, towards the shine of life and civilization. The city was awash in bittersweet celebrations; hope for the New Year to bring something worthwhile to counter all the disappointment and loss.
The crater would be filled; the cuts plastered. And the landscape would heal, over time; even if it was scar tissue instead of skin. But Seattle had a nasty habit of just burying its pain; pushing the remnants of better times down deep enough to not be seen, or remembered as easily.
Doing my part, I kept it all at my back, walking towards something brighter that might blind me from it.
Just for a while.
I slid into the first bar I came across, all my dark thoughts shouted-down by laughs and revelry. The mixture of booze and perfumes and cologne and sweat in the place was a thick haze on my skin. I felt unclean, but insulated.
Trying to make myself heard to the bartender above it all was Quixotic at best, and I wasn't sure the shot glass he eventually set in front of me contained what I had ordered, but my liver didn't have the most discriminating palette anyway.
Downing it in one gulp, the elixir burned its way into me, and I turned to take-in the crowd: a mess of bright colors and movement under hole-in-the-wall lighting. Every smile, every hug, every laugh seemed forced; rung untrue to me.
"That's sour grapes talking," I said, but my words were no match against the noise. Then from my right, a word was pushed at me above the fray.
"Hey!" The girl shouted again as I looked at her. Younger than me, eyes bright but eyelids a bit lazy with drink.
"Hey," I said back with a nod and a polite smile. She said something else, but it was lost and I had to lean my ear in closer.
"What!?"
"I said: You look really sad!"
I shrugged, and leaned my mouth closer.
"That's why I'm here! To cheer up!"
Her lips curled into a sly smile and then curled up with my own. I let it happen, let it linger, tasting on her tongue the fuel to her fire.
The turn of the year came and went against the backdrop of her bedroom, a few blocks away; the fireworks bursting hard and bright, outshining everything else. For a while. Then I was lost to dreams.
I slept deep; odd, being that I was in unfamiliar sheets.
I dreamt of skyscrapers, and blood; hornets flying against a purple sunrise, and then stinging me under my chin. Instead of pain I became orphaned in a cloud of pleasure, their buzzing wings lifting me up into the sky.
When sunlight finally caused my eyes to creak open, she was making coffee in the other room. I set my feet on the flat coldness of the floor, and made to stand, but my balance abandoned me and gravity chose the mattress over being vertical.
I decided I must have drank too much the night before, because now I felt drained. No hangover, just weak.
Soon I had coffee, and the kind of talk that comes along with that and a stranger: superficial; mildly inquisitive. And then as they do, things tapered down to an endpoint.
She had other things to do. It was fun. Call me sometime.
Cliche, sure. Understandable, of course. But coming from her mouth, the words seemed practiced, and bored, and routine. I wondered just where I must have fit in the chain of custody over her body.
I got dressed, made my goodbyes, and did my best to forget her by the time I hit the street and shuffled homeward.
The sun was up, but filtered through the overcast into a muted glow that spread across the city. It was brighter than it had been yesterday.
That would have to do.
Behind it all was a crater, where a building had once been. Cut just short of its hundredth birthday, it hadn't been the tallest, or the biggest, or the most famous. But it had been ours. And it was gone, now.
The crater was a tomb; a reliquary of the way the world was before, and a reminder of all that the future would not possess.
I stood there, in the dark, looking at it for a long minute. Looking at the absence.
Lighting a cigarette, I took a pull so hard that the ember ached from the effort. Stepping to the fence, I pushed a stream of smoke out into the void, watching it disperse above the crater before fading away.
It had invaded a point in space that it could not have hoped to penetrate only a couple of months ago. That thought alone sent me deeper.
"Change," I muttered to no one.
I took another drag, and turned away.
Plywood made for lousy bandages on all the wounds left behind by the storm, and Pioneer Square had been practically mummified. I headed north up 2nd Avenue, towards the shine of life and civilization. The city was awash in bittersweet celebrations; hope for the New Year to bring something worthwhile to counter all the disappointment and loss.
The crater would be filled; the cuts plastered. And the landscape would heal, over time; even if it was scar tissue instead of skin. But Seattle had a nasty habit of just burying its pain; pushing the remnants of better times down deep enough to not be seen, or remembered as easily.
Doing my part, I kept it all at my back, walking towards something brighter that might blind me from it.
Just for a while.
I slid into the first bar I came across, all my dark thoughts shouted-down by laughs and revelry. The mixture of booze and perfumes and cologne and sweat in the place was a thick haze on my skin. I felt unclean, but insulated.
Trying to make myself heard to the bartender above it all was Quixotic at best, and I wasn't sure the shot glass he eventually set in front of me contained what I had ordered, but my liver didn't have the most discriminating palette anyway.
Downing it in one gulp, the elixir burned its way into me, and I turned to take-in the crowd: a mess of bright colors and movement under hole-in-the-wall lighting. Every smile, every hug, every laugh seemed forced; rung untrue to me.
"That's sour grapes talking," I said, but my words were no match against the noise. Then from my right, a word was pushed at me above the fray.
"Hey!" The girl shouted again as I looked at her. Younger than me, eyes bright but eyelids a bit lazy with drink.
"Hey," I said back with a nod and a polite smile. She said something else, but it was lost and I had to lean my ear in closer.
"What!?"
"I said: You look really sad!"
I shrugged, and leaned my mouth closer.
"That's why I'm here! To cheer up!"
Her lips curled into a sly smile and then curled up with my own. I let it happen, let it linger, tasting on her tongue the fuel to her fire.
The turn of the year came and went against the backdrop of her bedroom, a few blocks away; the fireworks bursting hard and bright, outshining everything else. For a while. Then I was lost to dreams.
I slept deep; odd, being that I was in unfamiliar sheets.
I dreamt of skyscrapers, and blood; hornets flying against a purple sunrise, and then stinging me under my chin. Instead of pain I became orphaned in a cloud of pleasure, their buzzing wings lifting me up into the sky.
When sunlight finally caused my eyes to creak open, she was making coffee in the other room. I set my feet on the flat coldness of the floor, and made to stand, but my balance abandoned me and gravity chose the mattress over being vertical.
I decided I must have drank too much the night before, because now I felt drained. No hangover, just weak.
Soon I had coffee, and the kind of talk that comes along with that and a stranger: superficial; mildly inquisitive. And then as they do, things tapered down to an endpoint.
She had other things to do. It was fun. Call me sometime.
Cliche, sure. Understandable, of course. But coming from her mouth, the words seemed practiced, and bored, and routine. I wondered just where I must have fit in the chain of custody over her body.
I got dressed, made my goodbyes, and did my best to forget her by the time I hit the street and shuffled homeward.
The sun was up, but filtered through the overcast into a muted glow that spread across the city. It was brighter than it had been yesterday.
That would have to do.