quiet is violent

---2

The cool winter’s air stings my throat and cheeks as I hunch over trembling, spluttering sobs.  Tears of sweat drip from my shoulder blades and follow my spine. My lungs are burning. I fall to my knees, coughing, hacking as though my lungs are being sliced by an unseen sword. The acidic tasted of cigarettes is stained on my teeth and it burns my throat, slowly strangling and stealing my breath away. I fall to the ground. The cool almost loving feel of the pavement on my cheeks calms me for a moment, but the electric metallic wiring interrupts the serenity, and the painful irritating the tap taping is back, but it is the sound of stilettos on pavement. They sound angry. Angry shoes.  I smile and almost laugh. The sound stops, and so does my heart, her shadow towers over my crumpled body. I can feel my body pressed against the cool concrete, the rocks digging into my hips, shins and ribs. I feel like a naughty boy caught in the cookie jar.

“You’re a nice piece of work.” she hisses, as she walks by, her daughter’s bright green eyes questioning me, as she is dragged by her mother’s brisk pace.

I wished the cement would just swallow me up.

“Oh God.” I mutter to myself. “What have I become?”

The sound of doors slamming and a departing engine interrupts my thoughts; the aggravated sound is more soothing than what I am thinking. I lift up my head and watch those big green eyes, pressed up against the cage of the flashy BMW. I watch the shiny silver until it disappears.

I drop my head again, and close my eyes for a second, take a deep breath, and push my sweaty palms against the rough dusty concrete, and clamber to my feet. Guiltily and reluctantly I survey the half empty car park and sigh in relief as I realise that no one else has followed me. Hopefully they won’t remember the shabbily clad creature that has ruined their ‘normal’ day.  I run my pale, bruised and bony hands through the mattered oily strands that cage my hands in an unrelentless vice. When was the last time I had a shower? Was it yesterday? I can’t remember. All of these days seem to fade into one, hazy, lost in cigarette fumes, and thoughts of long gone youth. I pull my tatty old high school jacket closer around my body as the wind whips around me, making a sail out of the faded jacket. I pull it tighter.  Shivering, I step down from the curb onto the bitumen and then I continue out of the car park, trying to avoid the half eaten McDonald’s discarded and abandoned, like me. Except people actually wanted it in the beginning; then realised how awful it was and threw it away, and forgot about it. Cheap junk. That’s what I have become. Something so rotten and disgusting, that even children turn away from me.

It is rather uncommon to see litter in this posh neighbourhood, but if they can waste their money they will. They live such self-absorbed lives of plastic happiness, smiles are painted on their faces and the corruption and hunger of pride, poisoned their thoughts long ago.

I walk down the street and watch the cars comically scuttle along; they run away from me too, zipping past causing the colours to blur into streaks of light, they could be famous, or rich, or geniuses, but to the sun they are all just people trying to live a life worth remembering.

Its funny how we all try and make ourselves important and remembered by the world but in the end we’ll all be dead and gone, and our life will be merely a story, scarcely read, and no one will remember us. We’ll just become dust and dirt.  Well that’s what Matt told me but he’s not around anymore… I miss him

As I round the corner two boys pass me on their skateboards, their clothes billowing, hair flowing.  They nod at me as they pass; the taller one punches the shorter boy. Almost in slow motion his board slips from under beneath him. Knowingly the taller boy grasps his friend and steadies him. Their laughs echo off the concrete walls. I long for that feeling of innocence and peace, I try to soak it up, inhale it, inject it into my blood stream, but they become specs in the distance and the wind thrusts the feeling from me, a shiver shoots down my spine.

I wedge my hands deeper into my pockets. The nostalgia of youth causes my feeble composure to fall, someone has glued my feet to the pavement, it is a struggle to take one step, but something deep inside me, pushes me forward. Don’t cry.  Boys don’t cry. I fill my lungs and slowly push the icy air out through my teeth. I am such a mess I say to myself and I nod.

They say the first sign of insanity is talking to yourself.

The second sign is answering yourself.

My mind circles like a vulture, following a near dead animal, waiting to strike, it swoops in carrying the worries and troubles of the day come spilling, rushing through my head again. If there was only a way to numb this pain than “I would be the happiest person on earth.” I whisper. I take a deep breath and continue on wards, my boots making a heavy thud in time with my heart. 

The wind blows relentlessly through the trees howling and moaning at my crumpled sight, a stranger in this town, and outcast, a misfit. Their bones creaking, fragile and unstable; the leaves are tossed to and fro, scratching each other.  I should have bought a thicker jacket, I think as I wrap myself tighter into a one person hug, the thin flimsy one that I wore to the appointment is of no use.

Appointment.

I stop dead, mid step, mid breath, mid blink. Somewhere someone has hit pause as the tsunami lams into my chest the water crashes. Smashing into me. Filling my body. Drowning in my own thoughts. They smash into my stomach like a sledgehammer. They will be the death of me. I can’t move. My feet are cemented to the ground but my head is in the clouds of disappointment, regret and agony. I tell my legs to move but they are stubborn, and have a mind of their own, they will not move and inch.  I feel. I can’t feel. Numbness, nothingness. I close my eyes. I try to breathe slowly. But I can’t.  I splutter and gasp for air as I bend over as though I have just run a marathon. I steady myself on the retaining wall to my right. A Staffy bolts toward me, the grass turns into a blur of green beneath his stubby little legs. An eruption of barking sets off two other dogs. Their growls and howls turn into the dusk symphony orchestrated every night by the setting of the sun. I walk on, the symphony gradually fading as my thoughts creep back into my mind, like weeds slowly infesting everything.

“GET A GRIP!”  I yell at myself. My thoughts fade, and I look at the peachy pink velvety marshmallow sunset that expands around me. A Butters song comes to mind, the melody escapes my lips, the pristine sound of a familiar tune. I mouth the words, “I tried to paint the sunset but the colours couldn’t match your skin.” I reach into my pocket, I feel the almost etched creases in my forehead reappear, I panic a little, where is it, I search my other pockets but it is not there. “Ugh I wish I bought my iPod.” I mumble glumly.

Bummer.

I round the corner and kick a pebble onto the road, I go to kick it again and a car speeds past me, missing my by centimetres. The bass of the radio mimics my heart beat, I take a deep breath, rage bubbles up inside me and I storm off after the car. Without any warning the car reverses back almost into me again. The nerve of this driver! I go to yell at the driver but I see a familiar face poke out.