What does it matter?

What does it matter?

My mind is flush with all the colors of the rainbow. My eyes are wide with ambition and excitement. The wintry rain falls on my face mimicking the pattern of freckles. It doesn’t feel cold. It feels free. But what does it matter?

I taste the forgiving world on my tongue and walk it on my feet. I know what it is to be poor, to be rich, and to be somewhere in between. I know the feeling of waking to a sunrise and waking to a sunset. I’ve had the world rush by me in a series of days I can’t remember and I’ve had the suffering of lying, never able to forget the weight of my own soul. I’ve heard babies take their first born breathe and I’ve heard the elderly take their last. I can remember exactly the feeling of music loud enough to shake the earth and silence loud enough to drive a man mad. 

The streets walk by me. Time passes. I know it does, I can feel it. Rain turns to snow and daughters turn to mothers. I see it everyday. The same path every morning and night for years and years. It’s different than I thought. I could read this path like my own tattoos. Strange, how at peace I could be here. Truly free with the ideas I hold. My mind is my own and hasn’t aged as my hands have. I’ve aged with the streets and the trees that line them. They haven’t always overlooked the streets. From green, to red, to brown, to green once again. A pattern I’ve grown accustomed to. The people I’ve never seen that are all too familiar. There he goes, late to that interview, I hope he lands it. And they walk, handing out environmental flyers, I’ll take one out of pity. My favorite sight by far, the young, ambitious girl, I love her.

She walks with purpose. I hope she knows how to slow down, lord knows I didn’t. It’s almost like an image of myself, mirrored. She’s stopped for coffee and I can see it now. Her young lover approaches. She can slow down now. She’s alright. I watch them talk but I’ve watched it millions of times. That exact seat, that exact gaze, I’ve felt it. But in some way, they’re special, all of them are. Because they are special to themselves, maybe, or perhaps it's the way the cold makes them closer. I see it everyday. And every one I’ve seen is special. 

I think I’m hungry. I haven’t bought food on my route in years. I won’t today either, out of respect. Agnes was her name. Nice girl, she’d always pass out Christmas cards. She’d walk with me. We were both so young. She was an angel. She taught herself to code and wanted to make a fortune. I think she could’ve. She always said pretty girls like us “outta” walk together. She was right. I think about her a lot. Her class graduated two years after mine. I don’t think her parents went, but I did. She would’ve been stunning up there. Someone asked me who I was, what was I supposed to say. I said I was her sister. Some girls came up and gave me a cap. They told me how brave I was and it made me laugh. I didn’t fight him off like she did. Even if she didn’t win, she didn’t give up. I have the cap on my mantle. She always put the cards she didn’t give away up there. She was too good.

So I don’t eat here simply because we did, and I’d like that to be my last memories of these dirty shops. The food here isn’t nearly as good without someone to eat it with. I don’t cry thinking about her anymore. I don’t think she’d like it. I put the old cards up every year and give a few to the homeless folks nearby. They lost her too. We’re like some strange, little family now. She would’ve loved that. In a way, she was my sister. We liked to fight about stupid things and she always slept at my apartment. We wore each other's clothes and ate each other's food. People asked me if we were in love. No, I loved her, but differently. I didn’t want to marry her. I wanted to watch her get married. I wanted to tell her kids about the stupid things she did. Now, I suppose, I’ll tell mine. She’d want to meet my kids so terribly. She was such a part of my life that, in a way, she will everyday. I wish I could tell her that. 

I love the shape of the buildings here. They tower elegantly, almost timelessly. I would weave around them like I was making a tapestry when I was young. The feel of the air is the same. I could still do it, I think, I have no desire to, though. The people passing fill me with something unknown to man. A perpetual youth that many will never touch is nestled in enlightenment. I swim here in a sea of emotion. The lovers, the ambitious, those full of hate, and those full of pain, they drown me out in a monochrome sea of life. My mind is on fire. Can’t they see me? I’m laughing, I’m screaming, I’m crying. I’m alive. I’m alive and no one else can feel it. No one ever could. That’s not true. Margot could.

She could feel every thought in my mind and it was like nothing I’ve ever seen. She walked the streets with some kind of ascended consciousness. I felt someone alive for the first time. I thought she was immature. I never could’ve imagined what she’d come to teach me. She followed me like a hopeless orphan, but she talked to me with a striking bitterness. I taught her to feel and she taught me. We could walk and time was like nothing. We would lay in bed and talk until noon the next day. We lived on the streets, the rooftops, and my bed. She’d walk me to class and I’d walk her home from work. It came to a point where she stopped going back. Her home was with me. It was indescribable. We talked like we’d never settle down while playing house in our own home. I felt her breathe some kind of life in me that I could’ve gotten no other way. We made promises that we would’ve kept and we were good. We were so good. The kind of good that’s worth getting married and taking my wife home every now and then to learn embarrassing stories of me. The kind of good I could never get with anyone else.

Margot loved Agnes. Not like I did. When Agnes was gone, Margot saw me fall apart in a way I never had. She wanted to help, but she knew she couldn’t. It was too much. She was falling apart with no support and I could feel it. She said she was going on a walk and I couldn’t tell her no. I wanted to. I wanted her to stay forever but I couldn’t speak. I watched her leave. I knew she wasn’t coming back. I called that night. I called the next night. I called every night for a year. I went to see her family but they hadn’t seen her since she started living with me. I couldn’t do a thing about it.

I still cry about Margot, I don’t think she’d mind. 

I still feel her heartbeat every time I hear mine. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel ridiculous to cry about a pretty girl. She wasn’t just a pretty girl. She’s the woman my children will call their mother. She was where I was born. She’s where I died. I’m suddenly begging for her mind to ease mine again as I stand in the cold. My mind is on fire in the rain and so is hers but I’m drowning in a sea of happy people. It's tragically hilarious how enlightenment is so central to my entire life but now it’s worthless. I’ve felt it all. I know everything I could know, and yet, here I am. What does it matter to be alive in a dead world when no one can feel your mind or your soul.