Fall

Fallen.

.......Snow was falling into my eyes and melting. I blinked and saw thousands of diamonds, clinging to my lashes...... It was daylight.
My clothes were soaked and I was lying on my back amongst piles of rubbish and shards of cruel green glass from a broken gin bottle. As I sat up the angle of the buildings that form the real world spun. I had no idea how I got there. The last I knew I was sat in the window of a disused tenement, overlooking part of the East River.
The River was still there, in plain view and as I looked up I realised, very matter of fact, that the window I had been sat in was two floors above me. At some stage the previous night I had blacked out and fallen. I wasn't amazed or even happy to be alive still. It wasn't like being reborn. It was just a simple moment of realisation. Feeling more miserable and wretched than ever before I stood and took stock of my injuries: My ankle was swollen but not badly damaged and a shard of the green gin bottle glass was deeply imbedded in the side of my wrist. I pulled it out and watched the hole fill with blood. I was beyond caring. I picked a cigarette butt up of the floor and tried to light it, but it was too wet.
For some reason the base of my spine was vibrating. I wasn’t concerned - I’d given up questioning why things happened.
I had no money. No place to go. Nothing. I felt like a ghost. I more than wished I was one. I had never felt so low.

The bar room was dim. Behind me someone was taking chairs off the tables and putting them on the swept floor. Whoever it was, they didn't have a face. Sat next to me an alcohol aged black guy was talking quietly to himself and shaking his head. What was he saying? If I concentrate really hard and listen, I mean really listen, I can hear him, but that's now. Back then I didn't want to know.
"I'm not worried," I said out loud. "This will all be over soon."
The guy next to me snapped momentarily out of his own, pained world.
"What? What?"
"Dou you think you’d know when the time has come and you're going to have to leave?"
His face wrinkled into a frown and he turned his concentration to his glass, focusing on it as if he could see the future and answer the obscure question I had just posed. But he was back in his own world, ignoring the shabby white trash sat next to him.
I couldn't get a drink on account that I only had one seventy-five in my pockets - a dollar, five dimes and a quarter. The ghosts who owned the place even refused me a glass of water. It didn’t matter. Who cared anyway? I could feel my spine vibrating again.
"Hope you get everything you ever want, thank you all and good night." I said pushing away from the bar. I turned to see the faceless entity still stacking chairs.
And then the street again.
Outside there were choices - up town, down town, East, West. You’re free, you can choose. But instead of going one way I went the other, my shoulders slumped and my head bowed. People crossed the street to avoid me or simply looked past me and I thought if I walked up to them on a collision course they'd simply just walk straight through me.
The snow was still falling, making the City lie about its true intentions, covering it in a layer of purity that hid the despair and lost hope in so much whiteness, but I was openly defeated. I sat on a bench in the park and watched squirrels and birds collect breadcrumbs.
My spine stared to vibrate again and I realized that it was just my pager, clipped into the waistband at the back of my trousers. Someone was trying to make contact. Only it didn’t matter any more. Once it would have meant something, but not anymore. Without looking at the number I unclipped the pager and dropped it into trash can next to the bench. As I walked away an old man began to scavenge through the day old newspapers and debris in an attempt to retrieve it.

Back in my tiny room I put my entire life inside a black trash bag. Things I had wanted at one time, things I'd never used, things I couldn't even remember owning, all of them, with the exception of a few clothes and a couple of tattered paper-backs, into a bag and then out with the rest of the trash. I showered in cold water and dried myself on an old shirt.
In the mirror a sickly face stared back. My nose was broken, probably from the fall, or maybe from something else and I was so obviously ill it was laughable. I urinated and passed blood and that scared me - I must’ve hurt myself worse than I thought when I fell. When I drank the liquid buzzed on my lips. When I held inanimate objects they struggled to free themselves from my grip. It still didn’t matter, didn’t change anything. The fact was set in stone - I was leaving.
I put the door and mailbox keys in an envelope along with a letter of explanation and dropped it through the super’s door.

Later I stepped out onto Eighth Avenue and felt the entire city zone in. The vast metropolis, with its high rises, pollution and bodies, from the brownstones of the outer-boroughs in the East to the industrial desert of Jersey in the West, rose up and revolved in front of me, causing a glass and concrete claustrophobia.
There was just one more thing I had to do.
I had to see Gracie one last time. If only to say goodbye.
Gracie.
I spoke her name to the swaying ignorance of the street.

She was crying. There weren't any tears in her eyes, but she was crying all the same. I guess I was crying too. If I think about we were probably all crying in some way for some reason. The accumulation of endless little disappointments or the result of something so big and so terrible that you just broke down and wept at the very thought. It didn't matter - our hands were in front of our eyes but we couldn't tell what we were doing.
"You're going somewhere." At last the tears came, making her eyes sparkle.
"Yeah, I think... I mean, I might be."
She nodded. She understood all right. I'd pushed my luck too far. There was nothing left for me. It was time to move on. There were other things too, stuff I don't want to go into. I'd more than pushed my luck as far as that was concerned. I was lucky to be getting out in tact.
"It's a beautiful day." I said, trying to understand where the snow clouds had gone.
"Yeah... Cold though. Will we ever see you again?"
I thought for a moment.
"I don't know, Gracie."
She nodded then looked at the fun park.
"Ride the carousel with me?"

For the rest of the day we played around in the fun park and walked along the crucifix shaped pier. I was sore as hell from falling from the window the previous night, but I never let on, purely because it was turning out to be the best day of my life.
The day that had seen me at my lowest ever had also turned out to be the greatest.
Sadly, I could feel time fleeting and in the last few hours we spent together I felt as though I could have died peacefully and that would be just fine.

Thirteen months before I had stood in the glory of the wee small hours overlooking the Grand Canyon, awed by it's tremendous size and natural magnificence. Surrounded by the clicking and whirring of motorized cameras and German tourists who had gathered just the same as I had to witness the sun rise over the land, I could feel the moment becoming a memory, soon to be lost in the shadows of time and thought, and yet felt powerless to do anything whatsoever to preserve and further savor the immense high I was feeling. And that's what my last day was. Some things are too good to be real life. They can only ever be memories, simply because for the most of the time I feel devoid of the ability to recognize and appreciate what I have in our hands before giving it up to time past.
"Don't leave without saying good bye." Gracie said at one point. "Promise."
I promised because at the time I really thought I’d be able to, but later in the day, when the Ferris wheel stopped with Gracie at the top and out of sight, I slipped away. I couldn’t say goodbye. I just couldn’t.
Someone once said that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
I know now that it isn't true.