One night

Just an experience.

I walked an X-amount of kilometres tonight. Not by choice, but by the spontaneous luck of me, yet again, screwing myself. I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. I was indulging something my conscience hates. No one knew where I was. I was offered a ride back up to Markham, just inside town where I could find my way from there. I said no, it’s fine, as long as there’s a bus up Markham Rd, I’m good. I was told the stop to stand at, but the person wasn’t certain and I thought they were wrong. I went with my instincts; I was wrong. I missed the last bus of the day - just a few min. after midnight - and was stuck without a person in the world to help me. That’s a lie. I was without an ounce of self-respect to admit where I was and ask for help from someone. I was in the city, in Scarborough - a town my parents moved my brother and me out of when we were kids, cause it was dangerous. I was there, alone, at night. I walked from Ellesmere all the way to my front door in Markham. Two hour walk. Through city streets, empty intersections and many yellow, red, green, gold and any other neon lights shining bright in the city; through overpasses of railroads, cargo bunkers sleeping on the tracks; over gravel and dirt and sidewalk near new developments still under construction, the machines slumbering in the dusty raw wasteland of earth; over more bridges, crossing rivers, glancing over railings at the jungle congested greenery still sprouting from this old town, founded circa 1789. How many signs must a town post, announcing your entry into the township, the village which still holds some splendour, south of the highway. Once home, crossing the line and hoppin’ over the hill onto Highway 7, the dull, quiet and ghostly city of Markham made me glad to be home. However, just before I crested the hill and walked up to the highway just in my sight, I could feel the dark, lush, green and black jungle - like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness - threaten to swallow me up - to seep out, grab me by my feet and drag me back down into the depravity of all that is light and good. More - it threatened to latch on to the wrongdoings of my night; the shame I spent two hours walking away from; the thing oily black and tainted that I was trying with each step to shed from my soul. G’night