The day is Thursday and this is my weekly ritual. I will take the shopping bags, shut the door, turn a corner and then immediately enter the pub and down a pint of cider outside. I will do the shopping from a printed list, always including a small can of something sweet but punchy - and not on the list - and down that as soon as I'm out and in the street again, the cider having worn off slightly by then, in the hope that it hits me and softens the blow before I find myself back at our door, imagining an arch of sheet metal letters above it. It is shameful to make such comparisons, I know as much, but as someone once said - it's how you feel and it is yours and yours only to feel this way.
I am now towards the end of the supply run, looking for brown sugar or some such, sluggishly scanning the wrong shelf, my mind miles away. I am aware of my surroundings the same way a factory worker might have once been while inspecting tins of beans for damage - mostly numb, yet capable of noticing things. A young woman walks past me and whispers "sorry!" as she blocks my view for a split second. I acknowledge her and I whisper back "you're OK...". In my peripheral vision she keps walking, then stops and turns. I hear a voice - soft, delicate and young, about two thirds of a note below my threshold of "angelic", but then one third above "could I listen to it every day?". Her and me are the only people in the aisle, so, Travis Bickle. I turn to face her, puzzled, and she says "I said I love it how I whispered and you whispered back! Like we're both giving out the same energy!". Oh, if she only knew. Her face is plump, she has a radiating smile, obsidian eyes and the only word that comes to my mind is "genuine", and it somehow overrides my long-ingrained loathing of hearing people use the term "energy" this way. I attempt at my best version of an equally genuine smile, which, the way I am now, will undoubtedly resemble that of a shitting feline instead. I know this because I tried not long ago, for a security pass, and I saw how the result compared with the intent. It is a saddening but curious discovery that you can lose your mind's once unison connection with your own face.
I do this poor impression of a smile and I want to pour my heart out, and I say "Only superficially so. This is about the only way I can speak at this point". And then she opens her lips ever so slightly, she frowns and she fades for a second as she ponders, but then in one instant she is back to her full, blinding luminosity and she approaches me, saying... No. All I said was "Aaawww..." - and she turned away eventually, the light all but extinguished as I now found myself outside of its cone, a flustered, confused Arctia Caja, fluttering in vain, now longing for it, but unable to locate it. When I left the shop, she was long gone.
she was gone, gone, the bigger they come, the larger her hand, till no one understands, why for so long she'd been gone →
As I reach the nearest litter bin, I set my bags down, grab the can, hastily unwrap a greasy, cold, own-brand pork pie and I begin to consume both. The young apothecary passes me by (must be 5:29 already!), he nods and says "Oh I love me a pork pie" - "Don't we all", I reply. I finish my drink and I'm back where I started, no softening occurs and will not occur unless I increase the dosage, and we all know where that leads.
I try to accepty my surroundings and as I soak in the warmth of the pavement now starting to give away what it stored, I ground myself for a moment.
In several minutes I'm back at the door, and I look above it as I turn the key.
No, it doesn't, and it is truly the grimmest of all mockeries committed.