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I don't know what this is
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I don't know what this is |
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roxane Senior Member
since 1999-09-02
Posts 505us |
There is sort of a caustic air that burns my eyes sometime after midnight. I'm sweeping a floor and getting my second wind, something I'll need later, but now it serves only to annoy me. An ancient pain in my left shoulder blade aches warmly almost as if to soothe my cold frame in anyway possible. I feel like one of those Dickensian characters, little innocent kids, perpetually covered in soot and filth, sweeping and working, totally abandoned. I always think of them when I see someone completely miserable, and I wonder who they go home to, where they come from and if, when I bring them their food, should I put a little extra on their plate. There are only two people left in the dining room. The doors are locked, were locked sometime ago, but these people remained as if they needed to hold on to the companionship that the empty restaurant provided. One of them is a young woman, pouring over books and papers. The other is a middle-aged man, in a business suit, looking lost and sleepy, and out of place all together. As I go to sweep by the woman's chair, she moves her feet. "Sorry I'm in your way." she says, and moves the whole pile of books, papers, etc over to the left end of the table. A half smoked cigarette hangs out of her mouth. I look down at her, stopping my work, and she looks up at me. "Do you need me to leave?" she asks. I don't know what comes over me, but I go and make myself a glass of water and sit down across from her. She doesn't seem to mind the company. "How are you?" I asked. She puts the cigarette out and rubs her hands over her face as if to sculpt an appropriate expression. "Tired." she replies. She has stopped reading, and has focused her attention more on me. I ask her about her work and her life. She's a lonely college student, drowning in debt, making less money than me, although she has a bachelor's degree in something, she didn't tell me what. I am overwhelmed with sympathy for her as she tells me about how hard it is, how much she envies me and my "care-free high school life". Then we turn our conversation away from the problems and she tells me about her friends, the ones she rarely sees. There is a bit of resentment in her words; they don't have to work forty hours a week while carrying 17 hours at school, they have fiancees and husbands to go home to, some even have babies. She misses them and loves them, though, and when she sees them, she says "I try to make the most of it. I try to be the person that I'm not and be happy when I'm not. Then, they can make me forget all my problems, and I drift from this reality." She wants to be honest and compassionate, but says she realizes the two rarely cooperate. She stops talking all at once and looks at me with these mental-breakdown eyes. A purple hue arises from the bloodshot blue things, and she seems on the verge of tears. I ask her, impolitely, if she goes to therapy. She says no, that she can't afford it, and it wouldn't help. She says that all her misery rises up inside her, and she has to get it out, and she tries to do it by herself. She takes another look at me, and then lays her head down on the table and sobs. At that time the man comes over to our table and puts his arm around her. He whispers things into her ear, I can't make them out, but then he's crying too. I suddenly notice how awkwardly he wears this business suit, as if he wasn't used to it. I want to cry to, if not to let out my own sadness, then to at least belong with them. The man looks up, his sobbing ceases, but tears roll down his face. "What's wrong?" I ask. He doesn't say anything, but he reaches out for my shoulder wtih his left hand. I notice a ring of dead skin on his ring finger, white and fleshy. He pulls me into to their little haven of catharsis, and beckons me to cry too. I do. A little for myself, but more for them. All three of us, strangers, huddled together in a fast food dining room, crying from the very depths of our hearts. We all cry the same, so much so that we no longer hear ourselves, but we hear each other. It is moments like this rare one that I wish that everyone could see me, completely unentertained, sobbing among siblings I don't know, but am somehow connected to, and tired and hungry. We, a pitiful mass, untied in our unhappiness, revel in it together and relieve our friends of any discomfort. We spare them this event and many others they never saw, because we want them to be happy. We press on with little complaint, inside rotting with each little hurtful thing, and hope that they never discover this side of us. It didn't matter that we didn't know why the other was crying, we just knew there was some universal pain that bound us to each other. We sit there for half an hour before they leave, and I am left to continue to sweep the floor, with only a vestige of a memory of a comfort so unparalleled as the comfort I found in those strangers. ------------------ "Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon or stay too long in such a place as this." Charles Dickens roxane |
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| © Copyright 1999 roxane - All Rights Reserved | |||
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PhaerieChild Senior Member
since 1999-08-30
Posts 1787Aloha, Oregon |
I don't know what this is but I loved it! It was simple and eloquent. Very moving! ------------------ If you love me like music, I'll be your song. ~Heart~ Dreamboat Annie |
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JennyLee Senior Member
since 1999-09-01
Posts 1461Northwestern, NJ. |
I like this very much,it speaks loudly of the comfort found in strangers and how lives seem at times to run across each other in times of spititual trouble. You stated this very well!  Jenny  |
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Watcher666 Senior Member
since 1999-10-13
Posts 1606 |
Beautiful story with a heart-warming message.Well done! ------------------ Illusion...what we see and what we do...it's all up to you. |
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Marilyn Member Elite
since 1999-09-26
Posts 2621Ontario, Canada |
I wanted to cry with the group on this one. To find comfort in strangers while unable to in people we call friends. It is the human pride that causes us not to show vulerablity to people close to us. We know that a moment with a stanger will not come back to hurt us. Is that it? You have stirred many thoughts and feeling with this work. Well done. |
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hoot_owl_rn Member Patricius
since 1999-07-05
Posts 10750Glen Hope, PA USA |
Very nice...I like the imagery you portrayed with this piece |
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