dawn. still tasting the last smoke, still breathing slow and quiet enough to hear the sound of the black clock on the wall move through time, move through the night and into the dawn. the old man from room 103 has fallen five stairs like a cloud over this little town, and as he cries out into the empty lobby, I want to join him on the floor.
and I do, if only to help him back to his feet and set his plaid cap back over that feathered, snowy hair. he limps on his cane and grunts with every exhale. shuffling through the glass doors I can feel the wind crawl back here, by the stairs, and it is sorrow. dawn, yet no such thing, as the cloud is joined by its brothers, as the sea has purged into heaven its heaving body and carried itself, like a ghost inquest, over the metal boxes of cities and the static air of the desert, in search of a corner to cry inside. and the clouds congregate a storm to swallow the dawn.
I crouch on the lowest step now to duck the wind as the door swings shut. the cloud has signed its name down the window with its blood. the whole of the lobby is a belly, in it I am macerated.
I light another cigarette as I sit there, even though I don't want one. I listen to my breath, still slow and quiet enough to hear the sound of the black clock on the wall move through time, move through the dawn and into the storm. I count each breath in my mind, but each breath begins to wither.
breakdowns don't leave 30 day notices, they don't even ring the doorbell. when they arrive, they kick down the door and go straight for the coffin under your heart. sitting here, on the lowest step of a dark lobby after dawn, with no dawn to speak of, I am breaking down.
I don't have reason, I don't have any reason, at all. anguish is my shadow's name, to be carried as a burden from my shoulders, to never take beauty for granted, to believe that maybe the storm is worth braving.
and as I lay my face in my hands, dropping the cigarette to the tile, I begin to cry without reserve or control, and the sounds of light footsteps begin to circle the high ceilings.
I'm trying as hard as I can to hold back the choking, gagging gasps inside, I'm watching the stairs and the halls to see a shadow or a trace, and the footsteps keep coming, but there is no one.
and as my choking is stifled, it becomes clear to me that these are not footsteps at all. I pick up the smoke, stand, rub my eyes and stumble before walking. I take a corner to a back room where many of the maids and bar tenders stash their belongings, and see the source. amidst the low ceiling of the room, a tiny sqaure of space is carved that I'd never noticed before. it's a skylight, and the rain is pouring down through a leak, down into the warm room, pattering over a pile of paper.
I want to pray to that Something I abhor and I doubt, for the very trust in my flesh has fallen into question, subverted by the chance that nothing is real, that I'd be set free on the new wind billowing overhead.
I burn the cigarette out on these words and stand in the rain, in the dark, in the night-dawn. praying for the first time in over four years.