Life 3

"She's beautiful."

"Yes," he smiled. "She died 15 years ago."

I know I'm just a punk. I'm just a kid who's never loved anything or anyone more than he's loved himself, one who's really never seen the world beyond this 13" screen, one who's just another number, just another person who gets up every day and scrapes his elbows against the cubicle as it shrinks around him. I'm caught up in these cycles of life, these inhuman rhythms we're told to hopscotch our way through, carrot dangling in front of us, thinking we've got a better shot at that orange stick than everyone before us.

He was shorter than me. And much older. He'd run the race...and maybe he'd lost. That's what most would say, I think, if they saw him, as I did, slowly fumble for another nickel. But I didn't see that.

I saw them together. Pianos and guitars were playing somewhere...a jazzy melody with just a twinge of melancholy floating lightheartedly above the bass line. There was wind. And the wind, I watched it, I smelled it, I tasted it as it buffeted against her dress, blowing away the flower he'd picked for her from its comfortable resting place behind her ear. But she didn't care, because she was with him, and I could see it.

I could see it. He felt like the luckiest chum in the world.

But with a snap I blinked, and all of a sudden I was in the real world again.

The cycle continued.

And he was gone.

For a minute there,
I lost myself.

I lost myself.