Jailbird Tango

Part 5 - Poetry

Laura was holed up in her room again. She hardly ever came out. I had even spoken to her course advisor about the possibility of her deferring for a while, but Laura wasn't having that either.

It was hard when you were just surrounded by sadness all the time, like a room that's been filled with smoke. I tried to escape it, to get some fresh air, but just like the smoke, sadness follows.

Out of boredom I rifled through my bookshelf to try and find a decent book to read. The only thing that was jumping out at me was the antiquated poetry book. I flipped through each poem before coming across the page about the cabin in the woods.

Darkness,

the sky tinged with darkness,

nowhere to run

in a forest that rustles

and listens to your every move.

Strings pulled,

at first it was the strings of others

the past then took ahold.

Blue water,

ice floating on the lake

reflecting the sunset,

red sunset,

a darkened cabin in the woods.

Nestled amongst the company

of trees and plants and flowers,

it now hides.

I couldn't help but think of myself. I knew that it was observational poetry, but all poetry had meanings, even when the reader made them themselves. Poetry doesn't come from nothing, or at least my Lecturer said that.

I thought of myself as the cabin in the woods, hidden, stifled by my sister's sadness. As I ran my fingers over the worn page, I felt some bumps in a specific pattern. It was like it was a childish attempt at braille. Why were there uniform dots in a poetry book?

There were definitely some braille letters, four o's. With a chuckle and a shake of my head, I slipped the small book into my bag and called out to Laura that I was heading out.

As usual, there was no response.

It was almost like Laura was stuck in one moment, everyone else had moved to the next chapter and I was stuck in between. Inbetween. Red and Blue, why did that resonate with me?

I stepped outside, blinking in the glare of the cloudy day. After closing the door, I brought the book out of my bag, getting lost in the pages as I walked down the street. I didn't feel like there was anyone else there, yet like I was being watched.

I glanced up from the book, blinking as I looked across the road. There was the blind man - The Host as he called himself, walking with someone else. A grey suited stranger. They looked like they could be brothers. Family, it made me glad to have helped him in the alley.

He somehow seemed to catch me looking, forever mumbling. He stopped in his tracks and it felt like he was looking right at me. He was still wearing the same bandage as the one that I had given him, just that almost all of it was soaked pink. The person he was with turned abruptly as the Host stopped, staring at me with almost black looking eyes. He raised an eyebrow before I raised my book again and hurried along.

I hadn't noticed that although they were on the opposite side of the road, we were heading in the same direction - for I was too wrapped up in the descriptions of landscapes and people that were so vivid that it felt real.