a human, in time

referencing "5 seconds, before falling" posted May 28th, 2013.

The stillness of the nightfall encapsulates the entire scene. A stage, in the middle of the square, abandoned and covered in dust and cobwebs. Simple souls passing by without leaving a trace of their existence. The only remnants are the exhales of the harrowing long day. Merely days ago, the scene was filled with joy, laughter and dancing. A tranquil wave of sound covered the listeners, like ashes the humans of Pompeii. But it disappeared, as if never there, unlike the lithified remains of man.

 

Like a senior, I sat on the bench. Listening to my own threnody, crossing gazes with passers-by. They carried themselves on their heavy feet, shoulders slumped as if someone cut the cords of a marionette. Unlike a freed puppet, they were still bound to something greater. And the bench and I became one, like moss on a rock, simply there, in space and time, at the exact moment that could not be defined.

 

The night air was heavy, and an occasional puff of blue passed in front of my eyes as I blew out my cigarette smoke. A passing late-night bus illuminated the corners of the square with its radiating white. The darkness stolen by the light, but only briefly. And the eyes, squinted, punched and bloodshot. Flashbacks arrive, like that flickering light, five seconds before falling out. This time, no woman to screw the bulb back in tight.

 

There are times in life, when you’re being tried by yourself. Carefully analysing every step that you take, but with doing just that, are you alive? The time goes by like a gust of wind, and the cigarette smoke dissipates from a cluster of gas into a thin fog, only to disappear in the night sky. But you know, that it’s still there. Just as time, after every careful treading onto quicksand, can still make you sink. And time does the same, falls you into place and simply rolls by.

 

An exemption from making a choice, does not get you further than where you started. And I sat there, on that bench, feeling sixty-seven years old, wondering what I did and what time I have left. My vaporised cigarette was the only indication of time, and I was covered in ash. It was time to get up and feel my joints crack. Like a symphony in tune, they loosened and performed. A serenade of the old, a ballad for the young.