#robinreid

Hunting humanity

the bus weaves through tunnels,

emerging under an overpass,

piss yellow light flows through my window

hinting at their smell.

two moth eaten men bask in the perpetual twilight,

stretched out on stained towels,

the clattering chains of cars

unaware of their damp souls,

a deathless tremor consumes them,

pounding the ground,

the one with the underbite grinds his teeth,

like a bulldog trying to sing,

his friends leg keeps the time,

I can’t hear him,

but I imagine he’s singing.

both seem happy,

better yet, satisfied,

one with his tobacco pouch,

the other with his milk and hot chicken,

for them,

today was a good day.

lurching out from the overpass into the darkness,

i recall the morning,

dry mouth screaming for water,

dry brain wailing for dopamine,

i shared that feeling with those men beneath the overpass.

An untangling

of tangled minds.

God’s love?

not enough.

mother’s love, father’s love?

not enough.

brother’s love, sister’s love, cousin’s love?

not enough.

grandmother’s love, grandfather’s love, uncle’s love, auntie’s love?

not enough.

friend’s love, best friend’s love, paramour’s love, unrequited love?

not enough.

Your love?

Staring at the family picture on Jakes wall Callum felt his consciousness fall out from behind him with a shudder. From Jake’s third floor apartment he first fell through a Muslim family’s home. The aromatic cloud of curry enshrouded him as he continued his downward trajectory into a young couple’s apartment. They sat across from each other at the kitchen table. The girl had crossed her arms, her thin lips stiffer than the reinforced concrete Callum was falling through. The boy pressed his face into the palms of his hands, his shoulders silently jolting as the tea kettle whistled. Callum turned to face the direction of his descent.

Shouldn’t I be afraid, thought Callum as he fell into the foyer and briefly hung above the foyers dazzling chandelier. Spectacular marble pillars reached up to him as an elderly woman with a cocker spaniel tracked muddy footprints across the vast room toward the elevator. Callum imagined the pair much younger, when they first began their journey across the marbled floor, only aging with each step forward. The elevator deciding whether she’d ascend to the stars or descend into Earth.

Suddenly, Callum felt something pull at his shoulders with great force as he was dragged toward the Earth with frightening speed.  He rushed past the Earth’s core, up through the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere a little west of Morocco, and back up into the sky. The ocean became a pond, the continent an island, and the Earth a large sapphire bead.  For a moment he finally understood what all those astronauts meant by insignificance. The world doesn’t need humans; it is we who need the world. Turning around, Callum realised he was hurtling through space past swirling nebulas and lost asteroids looking for a place to call home.

As he shot past Alpha Centauri, Andromeda and even Betelgeuse, Callum came into a large void of nothingness. It was as though someone had pulled a hood over his head that had tiny holes left in it from when silverfish had felt hungry and, as a result, let pin pricks of light through. A great wave of loneliness flooded over him as his partner, Penelope, floated into his mind. Recently, she’d been accepted into the University of Melbourne to start work on her PhD and would be leaving within a couple of months. From the corner of his eye, Callum thought he saw something long and red wriggling toward him through the darkness.

Slowly the red rope gently wrapped itself around his waist. Callum smiled and ran his hands up its soft, almost cashmere, back; he knew it was time to go. Callum felt it tug at his waist, first gently then with even more force than when he was cast from Earth’s orbit. As he plummeted through the galaxies and nebulas in a kaleidoscope of colour Callum felt reassured. As reality cascaded around him he crashed back into his body, and dropped the pipe.