In the beginning, there was darkness. It, like a thick fog of smoke, or glass even, filled (as if a cup, or a fishbowl) with darkness. The shapes of fire hydrants, chimneys and civilization, are all being hugged by this being that is darkness. One would think of the sun about now.
He cut through it. His cane his lead, his quivering legs following. With each step, he may be the beginning of a statue, or he is crumbling into the concrete ground. From any angle, you cannot tell if he is emerging from the floor from a statue or retreating into one.
This is how it went: His cane skips along on the concrete, creating a steady rhythm with perhaps the stars, which his neck is angled up towards every 6 or 7 steps. What could he be looking for? His beard, waves of cotton hanging off of his chin. Clunk, clunk, clunk. The stars in motion, the moon at a loss. Walking along the sidewalk, hugged by the darkness, as if a parent seeking a child that slipped past sight and sound- aha! Emerging right through the roof- there it was. But, of course.
Looking up to the iridescent, milky-glowing sphere, he himself is redirected. The rhythm stops. The soles of his feet are frigid, no longer moving. Looking at her, the moon, he images her bulbous crater face to be tangible. He can feel in his hands, (rubbing his fingers together). He imagines he could dislodge her from the empty black curtain- and simply roll her across his wrinkled, rough knuckles. It could be that easy.
Where little girls will crowd around- large ovals for mouths, tongues lolling at the agile crater coin doing aerobics across his knuckles. But, it is just a magic trick. And then, clever the old man is, he will, with an abrupt and subtle movement, make the coin disappear. Right into the gap that is air. While immediately after, the little girl’s faces would all draw down to the degree of painted-on melancholy clown faces. The red, white and black paint bleeding from their tears, streaming down their faces- water-color paint thrown in their cheeks- creating a masterpiece of sadness. For the children, there are no comforting embraces to give them solace- just thousands of scrambling hands, like wild flies trying to connect in the darkness. An echo of gasps.
The little girls don’t gasp because the coin has vanished between the bony fingers of a man on a street with a cane; but because they have lost the stable exit and motion of their breath through the vacuum of darkness. The frame of the man’s nose is no longer illuminated and familiar by shadow. This reminds the girls of the subtle, but ever-so-present sound of static silence after the television goes off in the living room of their parent’s activity. When hearing the electricity sucked away through the sigh of the television- the feeling that enters their empty bellies in bed- the abrupt feeling of sudden loneliness- grinding in their bellies- begging their buzzing minds to turn off so the moment will release them from its frightening grip. This is that feeling- it reminds them of the sensation of putting their hands under their beds at night, the openness of space that lays there- while they believe that something just might yank them into a twilight zone. How unstable their legs become in the darkness, as they try to ignore the quivering of their knees as the bathroom grows miles away in the black. This is what it feels like to be alone. In this moment, no lullabies fade with them in the background so that silence is now the most painful thing they know.
He looks up from a long stare, releasing his hand from her curtain. Lets the reality of it all settle down- like wild pin balls ricocheting in all directions, he waits for them to calm and fall back into their organized sections, barring their interaction from each other as he knows what happens when he doesn’t. He is tired. So he gives her one more long look, one he can carry with him for hours afterward, like the white lights when closing one’s eyes too tight. But with her outlines instead. He looked at the moon tonight, and in this moment, at this point in space, the world changed.
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