THE WALK

As the day morph's into night and darkness shrouds the sky. The day's hot air drifts into a calm cool breeze. I sit on the kerb, just in front of a pub that serves hot buns and even hotter mug of cocoa drink. I'm trying to peer into the future with my knife-edge gaze. But, yes, of course, the future is bleak, not visible, totally out of sight. I can't see it. I can't even smell it. It's in a distant land. Uncharted. I sip the beverage. A bite of the pastry. A heave. Nothing. The future's unknown. It doesn't taste of buns and cocoa.

Suddenly my legs need a walk. They want... No, they need to walk away. Away from it all. They need to walk into the future. The pain that comes with the tedious straining to see what the future holds is excruciating and my legs need to walk to escape them. Muscle tense, weary from thoughts and, yet, I rise. A sauntering follows. I hit the streets, jean pants sting the crotch. I spread legs to ease it. The pub is behind me now. I wish the rest of the world could be too. The rest: what's left of the past. Yes, that woeful past. I want it gone. Get thee behind me! I command. It's adamant. It won't go. It says it has a lot to show me. A lot I'm yet to know. He says it's chaos that birthed order and pain birthed comfort. I say it's hurting me. It says it's necessary. It says if I don't feel the pain now I won't know what comfort is. If I don't get enslaved now I won't know freedom.

My heels hug the earth beneath me. I want to break into a run. I miss my running shoes now. And, yes, some good music. Never mind. I break into a run any way, or is it my soul that does. I should get used to life without the music and shoes. There are a lot who don't have them but they survive.

Fear. All the while I thought it was pain but it isn't. It's fear. It's what Ghandi was trying to say all these years since his motility. I heard he was racist. I want to loathe him but I'm human. He was human, too, so, I think he was my brother. I just shrug it off and say he probably didn't have the sense of self realization at the time. But, in truth, who's to judge who on self realization when I'm here, a wasteful lot in one person. All I do is crave to write. Write things that don't even make sense to me, how much more you. Yes, you, reading this.

This is how we kill ourselves; by loosing faith and hope. Just like that. That one time, Marley said: you never know how strong you are until being strong is your only option. I should concur. I need that strength now. I need to be strong. There are people watching, some waiting, others cheering me on. A belief. They know a hero. They have a hero. That hero is me.

Damn! That man was good, Marley I mean. He died. Cancer. Little prick got him. Sad thing, I tell you. A fine singer succumbed to that devil. It's an unfair world. Cruel. Life isn't free. You pay with your sweat for it, through your nose.
Death is absolutely free. It comes, seizes you. You don't get to toil for it. It's easy.

So, I'm walking these streets. Knocking about, not knowing what tomorrow holds, not knowing the very essence of my existence. Why I breathe. Life's a choice: should I live?; should I cease to? I should live, yes. I trudge on.

Home beckons. I turn the corner into Springs Of Hope street, solar powered street lights line the pavement. They're lit. Glimmers. I bask.

I unlock the door to apartment 1A. The movie 'Coming to America' comes to mind. I giggle. Its my favorite movie of all time.
I walk into the kitchen, pick up the flask and pour my self a mug of green tea. No milk, no sugar, just honey. The bitter sweet taste dance around my taste buds. Aroma swirls in my nostrils. Home. I pick one of the empty buckets along the corridor, fetch water from the larger reservoir pails. I bath down, dry with a towel and slip my butt into a pair of boxer-shorts, and I'm thinking: if I slip into that duvet tonight, eyes to the ceiling, hands beneath head, thinking, conflicting the gears that grind my mind, will those eyes open in the morning when the sun comes home, and the birds sing the moon a farewell requiem, and the day waits to hug me once more. This I know not. I do know one thing. I know that I lived for today.