Cycle

A pale face, and it’s cold. And tired. It doesn’t matter if it’s summer, winter, day, night, full moon full sun half moon half sun half brain or half past he’s here and there and that’s pretty much it. His stomach hurts. His eyes hurt. But they can stay open forever. He puts his eyelids at half-mast to ward off visitors, but he knows well enough there are none and does this as an excuse to himself. He knows himself well enough that he is never really happy or sad, he knows his inner self. His inner self doesn’t know his outer self though, which tends to leave both confused and sometimes arguing with each other.

He’s leaning his forehead against the train window. He’s not trying. He drifts off. His brain starts to rattle but he doesn’t care. Squealing. And rattling. And up and down. He feels stupid because some girl might be staring at him and he looks stupid because his face is stretched out across the window and it’s leaving a greasy smudge. He pulls away and looks down and looks confused and scared and now he feels he’s open in a spotlight and everyone on the entire train is thinking about how fucking dumb he looks, looking left and right, eyes down, red mark on his forehead. He decides quick to sneak a glance at the girl, and it’s not even a girl, it’s a boy, and the boy is on his cell phone but he isn’t talking. And now he feels very stupid. Because he looks around and the train car isn’t near full and no one’s looking at him and no one cares. Now he hates himself. Instead of being scared of everyone he just hates himself, and he’s been down this road so many times before that he hates himself just for that. His head is back on the window. He doesn’t care. His eyes are closed. He opens them to see a lonely, empty train yard no one uses anymore, pass by fast and drift off.

He’s sitting at a table outside and he ordered a coffee and the music from the expensive café down the street is muffled and inviting his senses and he feels cheap and false sipping from a paper cup. And drinking a coffee. Cars and horns and he hopes for rain so it feeds what he’s been working on and he can be in his moment and maybe-
He’s walking. His hands are in his pockets. He shuffles. He isn’t walking straight or cool. He’s starting to give up on everything now. The music and sounds are drifting and swirling and everything is starting to let him down again. He sees an old black man, skinny and sunken playing an acoustic guitar on the sidewalk. He looks content. He tosses a dollar in, although he can spare more. The man says Thank you my brother and the words stick in his mind while the guitar continues, never stopping for a second to acknowledge anything. He feels proud. He feels happy almost, he’s been connected. The man thanked him. Called him a brother. He feels for him. They know each other. Then he feels bad. He feels like the dollar might have been patronizing. But he was a patron, after all. He wasn’t the man’s friend, they didn’t really know each other. Then he feels betrayed. Envy rises. The man is happy, he is indeed content. He’s above him even if he is physically below him and he shares nothing with this man. He could pass by again and the man would utter the same phrase and would not even recognize his face and he doubted the man even looked up at his face or down at the dollar. He’s angry now. He’s angry and he feels sick and weak and scared of these people that are watching him shuffle and he walks a little down a dark narrow ally and he doesn’t know this place but he wished he did and the music and sounds and air are swirling and he wants to hurt himself but not too much so he leans in and bangs his against the wall and then bangs it again harder and it breaks the skin but he stops because he’s scared and he feels alien in the ally so he walks out scrambles out and people look at him and he wants to run to the man for safety and share a talk with him but he feels stupid again so he starts running down the street and he can hear people looking at him and he can feel it all and he’s gnashing his teeth together and he feels like a little kid again and he stops running because he feels like he’s going to trip and there are tears in his eyes and he’s looking down and he almost gets hit by a car and people are yelling at him and he runs and runs again and he keeps running until he gets to his train where he slows to a jog with his hands in his pockets and a big red scab forming on his head.

He’s in the seat again. It’s definitely night. He’s waiting to go home. His hand is casually over his forehead but he’s not as embarrassed. He’s trying to force thoughts, familiar ones to take his mind off of things and get him home again. He hates it all. He hates every world. He wonders if he can ever return here again. He has no idea what’s going on or what he’s supposed to be doing. His eyes have been open forever and his neck hurts. His eyes burn when he closes them. He sees the yard again, dark and dismal, with hopeful lights in the distance that don’t make it so bad. But it’s gone soon. He closes his eyes. He wished they could stay like that forever but he knows he has to show his ticket to the ticket man and he hates it.