SA SMITH

It is my regrettable conclusion that, in due course, we become all that we rebel against. Sure as we are that our upbringing was cruel and oppressive (and sometimes it truly was), nature weighs our ankles against riotous attempts to escape our ancestral fate. For all our jumping and fretting and fighting, we find ourselves like the ouroborous serpent: back where we started, having bitten off more than we can chew.

Sun swims jauntily through the aquatic blue ether, and splashes remissfully, persistently, onto damp, claggy skin. Viscous creams, lathered desperately, provide only edifying protection to emerging flushed blotches. Gluttonous glugs of balmy water spill out of shared bottles, dousing deteriorating t-shirts, mixing unreservedly with salinated, evaporating sweat.

Each Friday, she’d have a latte or a pastry to celebrate the passing of another week. It was an occasion. A moment of ceremony. She sat in her favourite seat, behind the stairs on the top deck of the bus. Sip, and watch the school children walk to school in their red jumpers and large backpacks. Glee warmed her like frothed milk. A smile seeped across her face. The stress percolated out of her tense jaw and stiff shoulders. Ahh Friday.

Marco drinks alone at this dull, warmly lit, half-full bar every evening. He tries to get there before the lead-weighted loneliness that this city drops on each of us sinks. The drink helps keep it afloat. Observers might say “That’s no solution” but Marco didn’t agree. After all he and the uncounted others wouldn’t do it unless it helped. Most medicines don’t remedy the root cause. Muffled symptoms sufficed today.

Trees bend like slinky toys in the wind. The car gets smaller and smaller. Eventually it will be a small dot, sharp enough to make a second hole through my soul…..The spirit drains out. I am weaker, but lighter. I feel less afraid. I feel less. The screaming has stopped.