We arrived on the Monday, the first day, the rest of our
lives begun in a chuff of diesel smoke as we pulled away from the airport
gates. We’d waited for five minutes in the lounge. Curious faces hidden behind darkened
stares our only welcome to shores where each new stream of arrivals disappeared
into its own beyond. We were alarmed when you weren’t there to meet us. One
short connecting hop and, deep in a foreign land, we were plunged like so much
luggage down a shoot. It begun with a G like your name, but this could be
anywhere and we could be lost. Out here with the small passage to exit signs it
didn’t work to have just one look because how could you know you’d get the same
chance again. I wouldn’t hold your eye at any other time but I was so tired. One
day lost, or was it two, seven hours distant and you’re quiet now. Just waiting,
and a little bit inside says you might start to worry. The crowd filters away as
we tunnel across the parking lot and the heat, it is oppressive.
You hear your name and all of a sudden it’s go, bags slung
in the boot, a few murmurs of assent and one translator, he’d just met her he
said. Foot down and the city, or something like it, is outside the door. A
driver was waiting to take you. Up streets with no name, across junctions that
lawlessly spill loose, to your eyes it’s all meaningless anyhow. The air is a
leaden grey and half-finished building blocks are lost amid rubbish and
sweeping motorways that direct the new world beneath. Quick notes, things said,
and you will digest at a later point. Not worth worrying about now, because
then you’re stuck. For a moment you think of the future but it won’t stay, and
it’s only because you’re older, not just tired that you do this.
The rear view mirror is a mouth, swallowing up whatever’s
left, a portal, like there’s no way back. Out the window you catch a glimpse of
someone, another life going someplace else. Fewer look back at you, your object
of contemplation, for you’re safe behind windows and doors. Lines of traffic
blur and introductions are quick, each a connecting plate in the barren jigsaw
of your mind. Cars swap places and horns blow freely and this is something
you’ll get used to, if only because it’s different. The air is kind of hazy,
smothered by exhaust fumes tipping from cars. You don’t know where to look but
your passenger is eyes set out the window and you wonder if this is how it all
fits together.
The city swells before you, alive even if inside you feel kind
of dormant. You didn’t notice the highways become streets but not a word’s been
said in the last five minutes. The traffic’s worse than you thought and you
haven’t bothered with a seat belt because why would you when no one cares. Shop
fronts are just sounds and you’ve done a good job, but this language is like
nothing and nothing you’ve ever known. Lights from office blocks and a thousand
competing horns flash like thunder. Trees, there are none, save for the odd
plucky bush nestled between lanes. People drift in and out of traffic, their
faces unflustered like the clothes on their back. The air is still but a strange
humidity fills your breath. You enter a side street, dimly lit and lined with
market stalls. Among the throng of people, some space to exit the car.
The alleyway is awash with rubbish brushed brazenly to the
side. The light rain has formed rivulets that dash down the gentle incline
across dents and divots, through cracks and etchings in the road. You’re not
sure where to look; you’ve a feeling of being watched. It’s 50 metres, no more,
before a set of steps that leads up past open houses to the apartment. The air
hangs heavy and if it wasn’t for you and the weather now I’d feel this welcome
devoid of all comfort. You’re too new to notice the strange stares like
questions repeatedly unanswered. The stairs exert an unfamiliar pull and is it
three flights you ask, I hadn’t counted. Time has become strange but there’s a
sense of urgency and things happening and passing too quick. Barely a chance to
look around, your room, it’s nice, spacious, if a little on the dark. It’s the
facilities though that hanker, could do with a little scrubbing up, and
conveniences so freely taken in the past, denied you now. Outside the bay
window, neighbouring blocks squash in behind halting rails, vacant stares into
the dusk.
The damp that lines the corridor has spread a little inside.
The door closes heavily and it’s like only your ears will hear it. Don’t drink
the water and the rubbish, it’s collected from your door. I’ve spent endless nights
in this living room, in my mind it’s all happened before. Dark times when shades
are drawn and how many quartered bottles that linger on in the silence.
Sometimes taking a walk some place and sometimes left alone with nowhere much
to go. Out on the street and we’re in unspoken lands, reliant on you as much as
any primal motive. Is it coming together or are you still skating, brushing
past things that will face the dawn much later on? It’s not quite dark but
evening is pressing and things are wrapping up or are they starting? People
gloss the streets like so much candy, denied the child in you, for there are
things to do.
It may as well be a main road and, after all it is leading
somewhere. The buildings rise up like so many others, floor on floor, the sky a
touchscreen target high above. Roof tops like pin pricks pierce the big blue, unashamedly
unaware of impropriety. Bright neon street signs serve to highlight the
concrete grey of the office block and the side streets plucked with puddles
splash and slip their way along. Cigarette smoke floating out before you beckons
as you enter the lobby and head for the lift. It’s several floors up and when
you’re there you sometimes have to walk down a level, these lifts, they have a
funny way about them. Other faces and mixing signs, elevated. Just look ahead
and be done with it. Awaiting the ping of that 13th floor, your head
is down, hoping a little, praying inside.
Nobody told me why we’d come, but then again neither had
you. We were all a little empty perhaps, playing with the truth, looking to start
anew. I sit here staring out the window, imagining the city beneath, abuzz with
life and a thousand interactions conducted without the slightest care for you.
You become a target, a point of interest, if only for a moment, before things
move on. It’s been a few days and the stares, do they matter so much now? Did they
even mean that much at all? Your thought travels back and forth, mimicking a
kind of space voyage as you fumble with memories and half-spun truths. We’re
separated like two trees. But I like to
think after the rain, we come together as a river, as a mouth finds its source.
The wallpaper is a murky grey and it seems to fit right now.
The colours around ache unrequitedly, pouring all over as you choose to ignore.
I can’t hear your cry above roof top howls and horns that resound into the
night. The window looks out on new blocks rising up out of the ash, and the
rain, it continues to pour on the guttering below. Outside, street vendors live
on passionately, finding dedication in that simplest of truths. I want you to
go and live a little, to feel the things you wouldn’t feel.
One evening I got lost, I took a path that led nowhere but
deep into the dusk. Dark alleyways and mountain lanes that seemed to want for
nothing but return to barren form. Scooped up by a stranger I was, tailed for
miles and offered assistance in the strangest of tongues. Drip, drip, dripping,
while all around was remoteness, eerie reflections off of street signs and
refuse at the side of the road. How it breaks my heart tonight to find one
simple craving wish fulfilled, the basic cry to slake your naked throat, and
how long you’ve been waiting, how dearly it’s possessed. On romantic nights I
note the plainness of my soul and come crying to you for help, to start all
over.
