Apollo's Awakening

Part 3: Past Pitch Of Grief

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
~Gerard Manley Hopkins, "No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief."~

Peter Chassinger walked through Central Park, thinking about what his girlfriend had told him before she left last night.

It was early morning, and Peter had been awake since Helen slammed the door in their penthouse loft.

He decided to take a walk to clear his head, and Central Park was the place they always went to, before life took a turn for the worst.

His footsteps made dull echoes in the tunnel of the bridge he walked under, and every now and then his expensive loafers would slosh in some of the puddles resulting from last night's downpour. In a normal circumstance, he would get angry and mutter some words Helen wouldn't approve of, but this morning he hadn't the energy.

He instead walked the path through a grove of trees, and listened to her normally soft voice spit stinging, poisonous words into his mind. "You need to stop caring about yourself and your stupid $500 shoes and start caring about what is important,"

He winced as a red bird flew by, the kind of red her hair was, bright and inviting. "You don't listen, except to your own biased thoughts. Your own family is afraid of you; your parents died and you didn't show one sign of mourning at the funeral. You simply took their money and left, abandoning the rest of the people you loved to live in a penthouse with a sofa that the governor can't afford himself."

"I won't let you abandon me too. I won't let you do the same to me."

Peter remembered the way she looked when she was angry, beautiful yet terrifying at the same time. Her nose would scrunch and her eyebrows would form a small crease, and her fists would clench.

What can I do? How can I change? There's no one left for me to care about, no way for me to show that I can care about something other than my money. He pondered as he turned a corner.

But as Peter's right foot stepped into a too-deep puddle of rain, his discouraged thoughts turned into thoughts of confusion. For right before him was the park bench that him and Helen would always sit, holding hands and laughing. But now there was someone lying on that bench, wearing what seemed to be a cloak made of leaves, who had blonde, shoulder length hair.