It is dark.
Outside, a light mist descends over the rooftops; wispy blankets of cool silence. The spires pierce the cloud, stretching for the stars, and I sit alone beneath. The cold of the wooden bench seeps through my jeans, my hands dive into my jacket pockets pulling the layer of warmth close to my body.
I blink once, twice, as my eyes begin to sting. The chill in the air bites at my damp cheeks, my gaze locked on the faint glimmer of stars through the curling fingers of cloud. My breath quivers as though my lungs are close to giving up. The vapour fogs up my vision, ablaze in a cold, orange glow from the solitary sodium streetlamp to my left.
The truth is I don’t know how I ended up here. Things were fine - nothing remarkable, yet nothing to complain about - and then, all too soon, things were most definitely not fine. Very little had turned out the way I had anticipated.
Often, it feels as though I simply hit a wall. An insurmountable, unavoidable, unforgiving wall. It knocks me down no matter how hard I fight to stay on my feet. My soul burns. It is inescapable and there is nothing to be done but surrender.
Like now.
Again, the feeling surges up through my torso. This time, I am unprepared and it escapes through my mouth, releasing a fleeting, tortured cry into the shadows. It echoes across the square. My lungs fill slowly with frigid air, my chest contracts. For the most part, my body is numb, save for a single, glacial tear that traces its way to my chin.
The sky above is vast and inky black. In the distance, it lightens to a milder hue, it’s midnight blue reflected in windows above and thin pools of water below.
Whatever the time is, I have been here long enough. I draw my coat tighter to my chest and push up from the bench, its cool, flat surface falling away beneath me. It is time to get on with it. This brief pause, this rare cadence stolen in solitude and silence, this breath from the relentless ocean wave after wave, is over. There is no choice but to carry on.
I step slowly, and deliberately, down an alleyway that leads me back into the dark.
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