The rain came down like broken glass and the city was a wound, bleeding light and exhaust and the smell of food frying in oil that’s been used too many times.
I was walking nowhere, which is the only place I ever go, and the streets were full of saints and sinners and the ones who don’t know which they are yet.
I passed a man with a guitar and a dog with three legs and a woman with eyes like cracked porcelain. She looked at me like she knew I was lying even though I hadn’t said a word.
I was chasing a feeling I’d lost in a dream, maybe in my hometown, maybe in a bar in this town, maybe in the arms of a girl named Sarah who wore feathers in her hair and whispered poems in Spanish that I never understood but pretended to.
She used to say, “You’re not real, you’re just a story someone forgot to finish.” And I’d laugh and kiss her shoulder and write her name on cigarettes and bathroom walls.
Now I was in a seaside city that didn’t have a name, or maybe it had too many. It was all cracked sidewalks and flickering signs and the hum of neon like the voice of God if God was tired and strung out and still trying to love us.
I ducked into a diner that smelled like coffee and had an attitude and sat at the counter next to a man who looked like he’d been crying for twenty years.
He ordered eggs and didn’t eat them. I ordered nothing and drank water like it was holy.
The waitress had a tattoo of a moth on her wrist and she moved like she was underwater.
I asked her what the moth meant and she said, “It’s the only thing that ever came back to me.”
I didn’t know what that meant but I nodded like I did. That’s how you survive in places like this, pretend you understand the poetry even when it’s written in blood.
Outside, the rain had stopped but the sky was still crying. I walked past a church with no roof and a man preaching to pigeons.
He said, “The end is near but it’s not the end you think.”
I dropped a dollar in his hat and he blessed me in a language I didn’t recognize. Maybe it was love. Maybe it was madness. Maybe there’s no difference.
I kept walking. I saw a girl dancing in the alley, barefoot, spinning like the world was hers and she didn’t care if it burned.
She had a radio playing and her dress was torn and she smiled like she knew something I didn’t.
I asked her name and she said, “Does it matter?”
I said no, but I wanted to know anyway.
She said, “Call me Mercy.” I did.
Mercy took my hand and led me to a rooftop where the city looked like a broken promise.
We sat on the edge and smoked cheap smokes and she told me about her mother who used to sing to the moon and her father who disappeared into sand dunes with a suitcase full of mirrors.
She said, “Everyone leaves. That’s the only truth.”
I said, “I’m still here.”
She said, “Not for long.”
We kissed like we were trying to remember something.
Her lips tasted like rain and ruin. I wanted to stay in that moment forever but time is a thief and memory is a liar.
She fell asleep with her head on my shoulder and I watched the stars flicker like dying cigarettes. I thought about the waitress and the moth and the man with the eggs and the preacher and the pigeons and the girl with the cracked eyes. I thought about all the stories I’d never finish.
In the morning, Mercy was gone.
She left a note that said, “Don’t look for me. I’m not lost.”
I folded it into my pocket and walked back down into the city.
The streets were waking up, yawning and stretching and pretending they hadn’t been crying all night.
I passed a boy selling roses and bought one for no one. I gave it to a woman waiting for the bus.
She said, “Why?”
I said, “Because.”
I ended up in a bookstore that smelled like dust and dreams. I found a copy of poems by Sappho and read the first page and cried. Not because I understood it, but because I didn’t. That’s the thing about beauty, it doesn’t need to make sense. It just needs to hurt a little.
I walked until my feet forgot they were tired. I found a bar with no name and sat in the corner and wrote this story on a piece of paper I found in my wallet.
The bartender asked what I was doing and I said, “Trying to remember.”
He said, “Good luck.”
Outside, the moon was rising, pale and bruised and beautiful. I looked up and whispered, “You’re a wanderer too.” And the moon winked like it knew.
Bio:
L Christopher Hennessy lives in Coffs Harbour NSW, Australia, He is the author of poetry, short stories, and novels, and has been published since the 1990s. his writing covers many genres.