Glimpsing a ghost

This ritual never really took effect before 3 am.

Before 3 am, the street still struggled, spitefully, to remain awake; but at that hollow hour, the old terrace would become a wayshrine.  No statue of deity would overshadow our traverses, no marble floor would ground our footsteps.

This particular gateway is a concrete cloister, with the exposed brickwork of the southern wall giving some feeble semblance of warmth against the floor tiles whose gradient slips unevenly between tones of decomposing autumn leaves, dried out sawdust and feline vomit. It is closed off by a rather lifelessly colored set of iron bars which seem to have once been violet, now thoroughly rusted and occasionally splattered with pigeon feces. Only recently had their visits begun to thin out.

The realm beyond this unromantic borderline is one we enjoyed observing after utterly exhausting one another. With an emergency dark chocolate supply and always different background music, we'd sit leaning against opposite walls, knees touching; he'd light a cigarette and say:

"Honest to God, you're completely insane."

If people knew how crazy you really are, how many do you think would ever speak to you? If mirrors had voices, asylums would become refuges for the sane.

At 3 am the street is silent, and only the sky is allowed to speak. The deepest sort of silence is a tapestry of sounds, and in taking them away we are doomed to deafness.

(a fragment from July 2015)