No matter where one’s eyes land, on evenings like these, regret and forced haste can be seen.
The first early Autumn evenings of the year that the freezing point is flirted, permanently shrugged shoulders are accompanied by visible human exhaust.
Though their footsteps quicken, there’s a deadening sound to every impact.
Remorse about not reaching for the heavier coat.
Remorse for their unpacked toques and gloves laying at rest in their guest bedroom’s closet.
Remorse for only being greeted by a darkened blue-black sky before and after their stay at the office.
Thoughts of warming oneself with a warm drink along the way evaporate.
Notions of a fair portion of an hour’s wage being pissed away put a stop to this.
Clarity from forecasting that the warm cup would not be enough to warm their unpocketed bare hands cements their rigid stride.
These activities would have to wait for tomorrow, or for when they are better equipped.
Stomp…
Further thoughts of remorse over lost opportunities during the warm months fill their minds.
Fantasies of cancelled vacations, drinks with friends, and forever postponed walks in the city’s ravine.
All this results in a thousand-yard stare which settles in at every crosswalk.
When younger, they made promises to themselves about doing better next year as Spring arrived.
Now older, they only wish for the comfort of their couch and the familiar smells of their sanctuary.
Moving forward, is this all that they’ll aspire to at the end of each normal day?
A life no longer filled with “what ifs”, just remorse?
Stomp…
In the midst of the following evening, a sense of self-betrayal hangs in the near glacial air.
The same quickened heavy pace acknowledges gallery exhibitions for the first time, yet moves on.
The warm glow from restaurants and bars no longer provides the simulacrum of genuine homeliness.
For now, in the new world, new anxieties of the shared indoor spaces exist.
Sick days are remembered, and elder loved ones suffer or perish.
Passing glances from deadened eyes speak to the lack of forthrightness that their social contract offers.
Their quickened pace is left to be fuelled by the year’s final quarter.
Predictable monsoons of pressures that provide no consequence to their own lives.
In the repressing darkness, apathy for anything between them and their couch is all that remains.
As all “what ifs” dissolve, one wonders when they became defective.
Stomp…
Then the rain turns to stones, leaving deadly sheets of their streets.
The darkness now being married, with endless seas of grey.
Faces of frigid remorse pass as statues frozen in time.
As they turn to their cellphones, and are greeted with another life.
A non-remorseful life, not shattered by their belly.
Rather filled sunshine and shared smiles and embraces.
They step ever harder, ever harder with without cheer.
Wherever is here, is not their peaceful sanctuary.
They’ll quicken their pace, forgetting about the hardened Earth.
Stomp…
Slide…
Thud.