Alchemy at the End of History

Life is a connected series of moments, yet non-linear by nature, and made stark, by the city on this stormy night. I lie on the bed, my back propped up by pillows and there is nowhere to move.

“I should flee,” I tell myself, still I remain, and tremble in my dorm, scheming, staring at the blinds, as if searching for some divination. Wishing for all that appears to be solitude, to transmute . . .into what it is not.

The caustic watchman sits, crouching at the entryway, four floors below, cloaked in anger, with a rage his mere madness cannot contain. Then he paces, in the hallway, like a predator, ready to explode, and waiting to pounce on the next arrival at the front door.

I laugh, bereft, and sardonically smile as I recall your implied beliefs in good men that duel, not for truth, but for naught, for nothing. I marvel at my poverty, and wonder haplessly, if justice will ever come.

The wind rattles the walls and window, as the car alarms wail outside like Banshees. The dead end street lies deserted below.

I freeze in my room like Victor Hugo, not in the farmhouse, but on the edge of an urban strip-mall, sequestered, amongst lost and wayward souls.