wither

III

The old bookshop smelt like the dust on its old wooden shelves, and it was eerily drowning in silence. The bell that rang upon my entrance wasn't quite enough to catch the attention of the old owner, who busied himself a book in his hands.

I made the same journey as the evening of every Wednesday, through the non-fiction alley, shelves lined up with faces of people who once lived and thought of their lives as yet another leaf in a pile in autumn. And in the back, in a corner almost forgotten, a sign read poetry.
I gazed upon the table, where a book stood amongst others in the new arrivals, except this one wasn't entirely what one would call new, it had been sitting there, begging to be of interest to someone, for weeks. Every so often, it is picked up by someone, studied for a few minutes, and then put back to rest in its old position. that book just happened to be where I poured my thoughts. That book was my own writing.

I had been told by the publishing agent that my writings were born of talent, that I had quite the way with words, yet it was never used in a way that could attract the readers. He had explained how readers want works of fantasy that could detach them from their reality, that could form an escape, and my works were just the opposite of that, how heavy with reality they were, and said that such events could be easily encountered in daily life in a way that reading loses its meaning. He seemed to forget how easing it feels to read as someone else interprets your mind, says things you refuse to admit to yourself but still feel within the depth of your mind.
My book was written under a nickname, I was a stranger to my works, as my habit was to abandon my thoughts in whichever place they end up, with no way to connect them back to me.

The sky was consumed in darkness, the arms of the tired clock declared the creeping of time into the depth of the night.
I was once again alone between the four walls of my room, which was dimmer with the absence of sunlight. I'd allowed myself to enjoy the last of the whiskey bottle with a cigarette to max that small burn that runs down my throat after each sip.
I left the window open for a change of air, and I found myself observing the the quietness of the streets at night, sometimes broken by the sound of distant sirens. Frank Sinatra was playing faintly in the background from the vinyl, one song after the other, it felt like hours of standing at the window, paralyzed by the dozen of thoughts roaming around my head.
The glass met my lips again, and I couldn't help but think of the number of people who had adopted this - the half asleep city with people in the isolation of their homes - as their definition of peace. In fact, it was peaceful, although I could argue that the silence when thoughts become loud can be rather unsettling, yet this was peaceful in a way.
The glass of whiskey was finished before my train of thought could reach an end, and with one last drag, the cigarette had given up as well.

I filled the glass with some water, and threw the two hollyhocks in it. They had begun to wilt in the pocket of my jacket through the day. The petals become somewhat softer when a flower is wilting. On the side of the glass, was the note she'd left me, I was no longer fond of its contents.

She has asked to meet, said she's eager to meet me after so long of admiring from afar. Although earlier I was willing to embrace whatever change this paper carried, but it was only born from a surge of joy and excitement, and through hours of a loop of thinking of every possible turn the events might take, I'd grown more hesitant. Perhaps it was fear of things going in an unknown course, or the hanging to how things were, rejecting change. Either way, she was more courageous than I could bring myself to be, or with less worry and more faith in the future.
I could never deny that somewhere within me, my wish was always to have her close where she can be the ease of my mind. But then again, there could be no guarantee that I'm lucky enough to have that, and even the simple glimpse of her in a far window would slip from me, so I'd always choose having little of her than none at all.

The flowers withered slowly through the hours of the night as I slept.