Brilliantine the mind though gusty be the roads through loneliness. Walking alone through the city I felt old sentiments astir. A gilded flame blowing around the edges of the heart. Also a memory of youth walking through light & windless rain, my body ephemeral shedding its name. It was like this to be specific: Along the street it was autumn as it also was in that part of the earth that day. A sturdy wind, unruly as a mule, came & went blowing all kinds of things along the pavement & in my head - Alone with yourself as they say. But my thoughts soon passing old unattended glories, dropped gaze & left the way they came.
On the bridge I lit the firecrackers, watching them fall in a sparkling chatter to the river - silver bodied under the empty sky & the white glow of electric lights. Once I imagined a broken filament of love stirring to glow inside the hollow threads of a bygone summer. But guided as I was through the chaos of the night I was no more than a child drawn to a lit keyhole. A goldfish investigating a sparkling grain of sand momentarily snared by light. What do I think of love now? Nothing. Except once I knew it in a place being young & studied the wounds it left in small, windy rooms & strong moonlight. A molten wing was crafted in those idle hours delightfully potent & unfragile in its idea, though to this day I've found little to no practical use for it. But time was the easiest currency to spend then & you always wanted your own music played being young, & there was no hurry troubling over things like bread or rain but rather what it was right that moment, in the world, with the days flying face down over the green felt like cards & your heart testing the flame.
Of course I was afraid. Of course also the wind was my friend & the rain was always a good reason for smoking.When I say the wind I do not mean to describe only the sensation of its travel & breath. I mean I am looking at a girl. The wind comes from nowhere & drops down my spine & if the wind is something we both knew we were good for each other for at least a little while. When I say the wind I mean after one winter the dark camellias crowded the staircase in a small wooden house in the south & she was gone & even the dog knew you were going to be no good & there was a piano in the house & you knew that you'd play more not because music was necessarily medicine but because you were alone & it was there, right in front of the fireplace, a shiny thing of wood, at times oddly more animate than yourself or the dog. And did that happen? When I talk about the wind I mean to say it didn't happen, the piano was always there, obediently gathering dust & the hearth crackled with flame as you lay down alone, beguiled by sentiment, sorting through etcetera. And then one night driving back to the city the stars like lit windows along the hills all the way to the city where she was. You wanted to be lit up the same way inside the night & the thought alone sufficed & when the wind blew through it didn't find room to whistle through the cracks for the first November in a couple of years.
Theres no point telling you about the rain. That is another thing altogether. Down Thirlemere Street I let the thought cut itself loose of me & I went around the corner for a coffee & browsed thoughtlessly through a newspaper, sitting in a night without significance. The arrival of morning now seemed both inevitable & preferable as simple as coins of separate currency being exchanged. After the coffee, I threw the newspaper in the garbage by the door. The wind in my face walking out I knew love was not something I ought to have thought of yet & I walked back along the river looking at the city in what blueness was left of the night .
