The Antidote

It was nice. How he turned around and asked me if I was alright. A real antidote. I looked behind me expecting to see a straggling dog or child. I couldn’t quite believe he had noticed me. I smiled. Me? Smile. I’m fine thanks. Thank you. Smile. Maybe it’s odd to be cradling your head against the railings on a winter’s afternoon. Not as odd as other days. But he hasn’t seen them.

It is too cold now to sit on the wall and count out loud. How winter makes my heart fall. That I may have to sit still indoors waiting for the hours to turn by. If I can’t leave the house by 9am I get stuck. Wondering what it is what and where I should go. As long as I keep moving then all such questions fade and fall and my feet and hands sink back into their own obsessions. Shop. (Clockwise). Apples. Milk. Bread. Wine. Maybe one of the chocolate bars by the till that play into your impulses. If I take one it is a plan. There is no room in me for impulsiveness. With impulse I lose hold of the railings and fall.

Nothing in this life is random. ‘John the Immortal’ believed that you die only because you make the wrong decisions. Almost choose it. I wonder if he thinks that now he is fifty.

I carry on with my walk. Think about what would have happened if I’d said ‘No. I am not alright.’ But that isn’t inside me. How can I explain that I left the building because the neighbour was laying out her underwear on the stairs and shouting through the letter box. I had rehearsed what I’d say to her. Ran along the lines of ‘fuck off’. But I can’t carry that off without shaking and I know if she sniffs out fear she will ring my doorbell for hours. Best to keep walking until she gets cold and goes in and puts her clothes back on.

All these things hang in a fog above me. I tried not to learn their names. Tried not to recognise them on the street. But they have seeped into my world. As unwanted as smudged ink on paper inscribed with carefully chosen words. It seems impossible to scrub them away now they are here.

But things fade. This winter is not last winter. The things that make me hold my head against the railings are the same but somehow different. These people will at some point become old characters in a story. Immortalised like John but not actually there. Eventually I may even forget them.

That makes me feel better as I come home to warm my hands. At least today I can think of the man who noticed me standing alone in the cold. I may keep him in my story.