Posted in Things I Wrote on Jul 25, 2005
| A cold rain falls on the dark streets as twelve bells sound the start of a new year. Elsewhere people are embracing, besottedly welcoming the new year in and ushering out the old one with which they had grown so bored. But, here there is no cause to celebrate another year when one has endured all he can stand in the year gone by. The rain, and the champagne, and the glitter and the laughter all run down the street in one undulating tide. But by the time this potpourri reaches him its joy has been drowned in the dirtiness and meanness of its surroundings. As it filters through the grate splashing down beneath Trey’s feet he is almost overtaken by the sadness of his reflection in its ruddy mirror. The current brings with it the foul stench of a place too long unwashed as Trey looks down through the steel bars at the party’s end. He shudders to think of how far he has fallen. Alone and despondent, he huddles, cold, longing for something, but not even able to recall what it is he’s longing for. Faint half-recollections of a life separated by an unfathomable chasm from his present state muddle his thoughts. Flickering pictures of another time bring warmth to his damp hovel, but he is tortured trying to discern if these are really memories or only unsubstantial dreams of some imagined happiness, they seem so surreal in his present surroundings. |
