Recalling the Abyss

He walks with no where to go. He pauses here and there to find some sort of direction. He heads west. He doesn't

know what he's looking for (that's if he is looking at all). He wears sea green canvas pants. A cherry stained sweater

stained with the obstacles he encounters as he makes his way along darkened alleys and ruptured wood fences. He

wears his matching cherry socks over his pants - a blossom growing beneath the sea. He walks with liquor bags in

his hands, heavy and full of sharp edges and rusty nails. He is not sure whar he will do with what he finds on his

journey but it is well known that another man's junk is a strangers treasure.

His long skinny legs take long purposeful pases along the cemented road, his knees bending with every step. It is a

sunny and breezy day. He squints his left eye as he walks towards the setting sun - his right eye covered by the

single filled sunglass lens. He is unshaved and untainted. He has grown accustomed to the judging stares of passing

people. They have an agenda to fulfill, hurriedly walking to reached their pre-scheduled appointment. He, on the other

hand, has no agenda to follow, no appointment to hurry to attend and no destination other than the ambiguousness of

the 'west'.

He walks along Boswell Avenue and faces a dreadful encounter ahead - two beautiful women smiling at the gossip

their day has brought them. He pauses and becomes motionless. His mind draws a blank when he urges it to guide

him in this delicate matter. He is ugly beneath the filth that has made his skin dry and blemished. He has stood in

front of building windows and has tried to figure out what he looked like before his unforeseen runaway. He couldn't

recall a thing. If he were asked how he became like this - a lonesome wolf outcasted by the rest of the pack - he

would reply,

"I don't recall how, but I know that I am here. The past is the fallen edge of a cliff. All I know hot to do is walk onward

and away from the debris."

But no one would ask, instead they would assume and feel that to be a relatively correct summary of the broken man.

They stare at him standing awkwardly in the middle of the sidewalk. They furrow their eyebrows and divide to pass

him on either side. One stepped onto the neighbouring law and the other off the curb - just enough distance. He

stared straight ahead until he couldn't hear the quickening steps behind him. When the world once again became

silent he took one step forward and turned his neck slightly to see no one behind him. He continues to walk west -

onward. His mind does not begin to analyze his actions. He has done that for far to long, and unsuccessfully.

He knows what is wrong with him. He has only ever been able to make one decision in which his body and mind both

agreeably set forth - to runaway. Every other decision has been a failure because they've all been expected; actions

foreseen by others as correct and appropriate. He fears decision already made for him - decision he is unable to

uphold.

He walks on and pauses often in the middle of the street. He does not want to go back to deal with the void of his

past but struggles every moment not too. But his clenched hands around his heavy bags hold his sturdily. He

refuses his knees to buckle and his hands to disguise any tears that may fall beneath them. He sees the world

through one unprotected eye and leaves the other in darkness, fallen away into the abyss of the past.

His is a journey of walking away from the edge - west and onward.