Those Who Walk Alone At Night

Chapter Two- The Sad. (Litany of Woe.)

Jay was jealous of the rain, that it hath no fear to fall even when it is known that there shall be no one to catch it and that it might fall upon his skin and be closer than the words of righteousness he has so long ignored in favour of his sins, which brand his bones and other places clear liquid ash can not reach nor wash away.

The sea breeze pushed around him yet never at him because it was unknown if his melancholy was contagious. The sea roared and screamed only a lifetime of seconds away from him, lightning accentuating the clouds and thunder booming in a way that would not grow flowers. Occasionally the boldest of waves would surge forthwith and soak as much of the fabric of his clothes as its dwindling reach could touch.

The sand around where he lay had become indented with the profile of his body and should he move the only proof he had ever existed there would be washed away and filled in the same way other gaps of space he had left behind were. And, like his clothes to the waves, or the dry land to the rain, he let the solitude and sadness soak in through his thoughts and reemerge as the noise the storm he may have conjured created.

The rain was full of ghosts tonight, that hollow echo on the hood of the car parked miles away from him, and sigh upon the glass windows, which pauses to listen for a reply. He was one of them, his skin and soul and skeleton held together by nothing but the smell of the sea and thread of the universe.

When he was ten, he was told by someone who was eleven who had nothing left but the last embers of her cigarette that happy people do not linger in a downpour.

Now, he does not linger. He persists and endures and the downpour does its work in service to him. Now, she sleeps or replies in that car parked miles away from him and has nothing as ephemeral as embers betwixt her fingers, but rather any number of hands that fit nicely with hers. Now, his sadness took form of not something as feasible as a downpour, but as perdurable as the darkness in his eyes, which contains both chaos and calmness, as the lighting in his veins, which makes it hard to sleep at night, and as the crash of waves that cause calamities, the boldest of which reach beyond.

The storm around him mirrored the ferocity of his sorrow and it would not calm until a crow or a silhouette appeared above him, knuckles white from gripping an umbrella so tight and told him that he would catch cold.

Pebbles and shells bowed and raised and bowed again with the push and pull of the waves as if they were caught on strings tied to the oceans tangible currents and occasionally Jay would curl his fingers into a fist, sand and grime sneaking under his fingernails, and catch a handful of rocks and mud. It left his hands dirty and tense but he kept doing it, making space for his body on the beach as if he were digging his own grave.

It was almost time for a face or omen to appear above him, and so he stopped. Let the waves clean his hands and his mind, let the bitter salty taste of his wrung-out heartaches fade, and spent his last moments of solitude to open his eyes and see the sky above him and feel the rain on his freezing skin and face.

And should he raise his body and raise his head to the sky and scream or cry, it would be drowned out in the echo of the storm.