It wasn’t to be talked about anymore, he had decided. He was
tired of words wasted so frivolously. He walked away, staring down at his heavy
steps, right, left, right, left. The dirt pounded back. The dirt stormed up his
legs, taking hold of the perspiration in his pores. A layer of ground scraps swarmed
up his calves, residues of earth fixed to his skin, sediments of mountains and
rivers and forest and cities, for that moment in time all committed to his
legs. He wiped off the anger on his forehead with his left hand and shut his
eyes. He would have cried, if he could only have gathered tears. He was dry.
Had been for so many years, there was no way around it. Somewhere in his
crowd-less chest there were long lost thoughts of his gentler days, days there
was an unfathomable sky above his head. Now the stars felt like an oppressing
ceiling, peeled, damaged by unscrupulous vengeance and water infiltration. He
was his worst neighbor. He was his last enemy standing. He wasn’t standing. He
was floating on the debris of his will. What was left of his longings? What was
left of his soul? He grinned, “soul…” He spoke without moving his lips, each
letter resonating silently in his ears, throat, mouth. He swallowed the sound. There
were no words, just the tyrannical weight of his every step against the complex
vastness of the ground. He was lost in his roads within, paths to a universe in
battle with its black hole. For thirty-four years he had outlasted the dark
abyss in his dreams, edge of canyons down his core, path to secrets locked in
his corners. He had not gone down. And in his hidden thoughts, he was fighting
that irrefutable long walk, that one last step and fall, free-fall down miles
of years in few seconds. The past giving place to a future he wouldn’t have,
future he had dared to plan against his own will. Future he had hid in a drawer
of his head, right around the one he had just buried with his last words – or
lack of them more likely. He knew he had surpassed his own worst expectations.
