The Doves that Strut

14

The iron gate remains closed as we left it last time, but as always, it isn't locked, which makes me wonder why they built it in the first place. Maybe they didn't want hobos sleeping inside, blocking the alley, but that doesn't really make sense anyway since I've never seen anyone besides me and Claire taking a turn here. I steady my soles on the sooty ground and lay my hands on the gate that is almost completely coated with brown rust. It barely moves, feebly creaking like a squealing bird as I force my strength on it. It's been so long since we last came here, I've forgotten what a strain it is to open the gate, especially when I have to do it alone.

Some moments later, I manage to push through and create just enough of a chink for myself to slide through. In the evening, the alley actually looks brighter than it was in the daytime, with the white lights automatically turned on. They fall, converge on the opposite brick-red walls, and lighten up the path in front of me. While I walk, my body projects two shadows instead of only one that I saw in other neighborhoods, each imitating my movement on a side, their backs crooked, like two lost voyagers in search of light. The radiance is visible, just around them, conceivable to them, but they just can't reach it, no matter how laboriously they swing their limbs.

But neither am I the shadow nor are you the light, are we, Claire?

I carefully watch my steps and stride over the pipes beneath me. With all the debris of brick and glass I see glittering with bad omens on the ground, God knows how my face would look if I accidentally tripped over one of these pipes. I'm not God, or Tiresias, but I reckon I wouldn't look worse than any of the frontliners.

The vents are turned off today, not raising the white film as usual, so I already can sight Claire's painting from afar. The cosmic space is now embellished with so many more details than my first time here. Over these one and a half years, Claire's added a lot more paints into her universe, which differentiate the hues of the nebulae and stars in the background as they reach out to each other, intertwining, but not unnaturally like many predesigned works. It's a grand scenery, beautiful beyond description but doesn't feel forced.

It's just that all things must come to an end. It's a perpetual law, whatever da Vinci said.

In the middle of the artwork, a person stands, of the same height as mine, whose left arm squarely stretches up, holding a yellow put-up umbrella with an ancient-looking sword as its shaft. He wears a black hoodie, the ends of its string fluttering in winds, a pair of black sports pants, and the symbolic black mask that covers up the lower half of his face, while the other half is left blank under his disheveled hair.

As if coming from a comic book, his style—thick lines and raw colors—conflicts with the dreamlike background, and it feels like they were two individual art pieces Photoshopped into the same canvas. It's a reminder of reality where things almost never go according to plans. Most of the time, reality just drops a piano without a heads-up, straight from the sky, in front of you, blocks your path and forces a detour. "It's not fair," some argue. Well, yes, it isn't. Life's a prick, but what can you do? The thing is most people worry so much, too much. They aren't adventurous and optimistic like Claire—me, for example—so they suck at life, hate it to their guts while keep on dwelling the impossibility, what life they could have been living if something hadn't happened, never living in the moment.

But I guess, the biggest lesson you learn from Claire is that you've got to let go sometimes, open your heart and just embrace whatever life has to offer. You don't overthink the future. You just take it, tightly hold on to its tail as long as you like the idea, whether it's the event itself or the people you get to do it with, regardless of how wild, deranged, irresponsible people may call it.

It just sucks that it took me so long to realize.

I move the ladder that lies flat before me, away to the side, and it clanks, grinding against the concrete ground. I hunch over, put my hands down, and sit with my gaze on the old me.