Cosmo and Cleon

(TW: MENTION OF SUICIDE)

Only after I died did I notice the way the light shone in through the windows up ahead, down to the station floor and the way people's faces basked in it just for a moment as they passed through, as if through a veil where time melts away and dust sparkles like gold in the flames. The sunlight pools and collects at our feet, and the people walk right through it, never looking down to see the whole of Victoria station glittering and alive. The sunlight passes right through me, with no skin to catch the warmth, no body to bathe in the golden veil that covers so gently. Instead, I am invisible. I am covered by a black veil, like how the horizon swallows the sun, and twilight ensues in its harrowing vanishment. Death swallowed my life in a similar way. I toyed with it for so long until one day it enclosed its hands around me, inescapable, and pulled me into its twilight (cause of death: unknown to me). Now I drifted seemingly aimless, or at least the reason hidden to me, around the train station. Unsure of what dragged me here and what continued to drag me from platform to platform. There was a passivity with which I lived, even in death. The world seemed unimpressive and not worth exploring. Anything out there was also buried in the pages of the newspapers littered along train platform benches along with that morning’s dew. You’d be surprised how much life there is at a train station, where else do people pass so distractedly but beautifully? Disenchanting phone conversations and eyes looking at screens or books or anywhere but other eyes. And yet its teeming with dreamers and lovers and cynics and these people carry places, histories, hurt, grief, and joy upon their face so clearly. Life is tangible here, it's in the sounds of trainers squeaking against the tiles, the sound of the ticket machines allowing entry, the wind as it blows through the air from the trains, and the trains as they leave and enter the station, crowded with life. It's so profound I can almost feel it brush against where my face would be. Almost. And that's enough. In the back of my mind, lingering is the picture of the day I leave the station, into the real world only to find that sunlight is not the only thing that passes through me but everything else too. Out there, the world is devastating and joyless. In here, I can feel life being lived, which I was never able to do. I stay here in this station and haunt its liveliness, trying to extract some of it for myself. In the newspapers I learn of all I'm not missing. I waste away here, but never diminish for what is already dead can never die. 

For now, I haunt the 5th platform, which is up two flights of stairs, across and then down two flights. I sit upon the same bench each day and stare out. I see many different kinds of people board and exit each train that stops. Those with suitcases, those with briefcases, teenagers adventuring around the city, children who are free to get lost as the burden of being found rests on their parents, who are frantic and distraught. However, on the opposite side of the platform, there he is.  

I spotted him a few weeks ago, wearing a scarlet scarf, sitting cross-legged on the bench, not in a rush but also not seeming care-free. A little like me, I thought. It wasn't joy or a mind unconcerned with the intricacies of a human life that I could sense. I could see in the lines upon his face that life had not been good to him. He was young, but in the weeks I'd been watching him, not one smile had flashed across his face. Just like me. I wonder if he ever stopped to feel the sun. At times, I wanted to scream to him, and tell him that the sun is there to be felt. It’s radiating for you, I thought, it's there for you. Life can be felt if you reach out for it, but no one learns this until it's too late. The sun goes on shining, begging for everyone to slow down, to look up at it and really see. 

In my mind, I called him Cosmo. He wore similar clothes each day. Different variations of blues and greens and khakis, he was the sea. His hair, sand. His eyes like granite pebbles on the sea bed. The world receded when I laid eyes upon him, and I believed he as much belonged to this world as I did. I knew that the world was cloudy for him too, that he saw his life stretched out before him through a pearly orb. I knew that the colour drained from his face and his throat went dry when he was asked to be present in not just body, but mind and spirit too. My mind swirled around the atmosphere and my body lay buried deep beneath layers of dirt.

He often looked like he was resting at the bottom of a swimming pool, peacefully. Where the sounds are muffled and drowned out, and one can feel their body as it holds them at the bottom, and there is the half-formed thought that they could need to go up for air at any moment, and the threat of death lingers always. But here life is not life, it is not tangible, touchable, or reachable. The deep nothing that surrounds is something beyond life, beyond anything describable. Below, there is no certainty that the people above haven’t disappeared, the swimming pool is not a swimming pool but one’s own mind that expands and expands. Eventually, we all have to come up for air. Breathe in the construction. Breathe in the grey. 

On my side of the platform, another man who I have named Cleon. Also tired, but a little more hopeful. Out of everyone I've seen, I can see the grief and joy most clearly on his face but the way he held himself made me think he knew what his purpose was here on Earth; he was present in that there was no need for him to explore in the depths of a pool or up in the atmosphere, for all the answers revealed themselves from inside himself. Still, he was a dreamer. He carried paintings under his right arm and over time it became clear they were his own. In his left hand, he always carried a lighter which every so often he would strike and watch the flame burn bright before him and then die as the train came rushing through the tunnel. I liked to watch him most of all. He returned twice weekly, always on Tuesdays and sometimes on Thursday or Friday. I never knew where he was going but it was always with his paintings and lighter. He always looked through his paintings while he waited for the train. He would look through them once, and then again and then again, obsessively. He studied them as if seeing them for the first time. 

On one particular day, his train was delayed and he was looking through his paintings until he hesitated with one. He was sitting directly in the sunlight and time seemed to go on forever. His fingertips gently brushed over the painting, in the same direction as the brushstrokes, he would shut his eyes and his fingers could perfectly trace the lines. When he opened his eyes again, tears were collecting in them and slowly, they’d drip down his cheek and land gently upon the page.

I studied Cosmo and Cleon for days. The way they moved, the places their eyes shifted to if they looked up at all, I read the lines of their faces for clues, I investigated as far as I could until I felt they were dear friends of mine. I didn't stop to think how much of my reality was made up of my own projections. To me, Cosmo and Cleon were as much soulmates as any two people could be. Maybe they weren’t destined to be together forever but perhaps they'd enlighten each other and show each other worlds beyond their vision. The reason, like most, was not fully formed in my mind. This is to mean the desperation with which I felt they were meant for each other was not clear and yet it persisted- a profound feeling somewhere under the veil that maybe my life could be demystified, or comprehended, if something so beautiful could make sense. I did not question that these two were ‘made’ for each other. Cosmo who was so much larger than a body, so otherworldly, and Cleon who was so bewitchingly alive within their body that it was hard to look away. I thought that maybe together they could learn what it is to really live, and maybe I could observe and learn in death what I never could in life. I thought about when someone is lonely or heartbroken and they hear a love song or a poem, they roll their eyes at it. But then, their whole world is lit on fire by a love so fierce and suddenly everything aligns and they know why people dedicate their lives and artistry to capturing the beauty of love. I wanted to understand. I never was acquainted with love, I was starved. I craved it. I felt the hollow chasm it carved into my chest. Or perhaps it was just like these trains, entering the platform I haunt and then leaving once again without me having boarded it. To love is to ache and allowing oneself to ache requires strength and vulnerability and in all my fear, I was too weak to hurt even if it meant being known, being seen, and being loved. I was a ghost haunting my little life even before I died. I never dared to be anything more. But Cosmo and Cleon, they could be more. They could be enchanting and intoxicated and maybe they could find that to live is to love, and to have lived is to have been loved. Maybe. I watched over my angels, could they feel my presence there like a cold flurry of air through their torso? Did they get the feeling that they were being watched over? If they felt it, they didn’t let on. I kept my distance, so as not to accidentally brush past them and be reminded of my absence in anything real, that I was unable to be touched or acknowledged. The chance of being known or seen was long lost and I tried to forget this fact as often as possible.

The task of uniting the people on the opposite sides of the train platform rested on me. How could I give either a reason to cross to the other platform, to have to board a different train all together? I saw Cleon look over at Cosmo several times in the weeks I'd been noticing him, but Cosmo never returned his gaze. Cleon seemed the type to go up to someone, not a care in the world and begin a conversation. I wondered why he never did with Cosmo, he just looked up from his paintings every so often and observed Cosmo's body as he pulled his scarf tighter around himself. It occurred to me that his paintings were on flimsy paper, and the wind rushed through the tunnel whenever a train approached and if his painting reached the other side, he would have no choice but to carry himself over. Once there, Cosmo might spot him, might finally return his gaze, and ask him about the beautiful painting that revealed itself to him, as if it was meant for him to find. As if the fates were listening to me think, a painting of a moonlit landscape fell from underneath Cleon’s arm and began drifting across the tracks. However, it landed just before it reached the other side. Cleon’s panicked eyes met Cosmo’s condoling gaze for a few seconds before the train came abruptly into the station, cutting through the air and pushing the painting further along the tracks. Seconds later, it left again, taking Cosmo with it. 

I felt deflated. Was it really me who cast the force that stole the painting from Cleon and sent it swirling down the tracks? I’d bought them no closer together and instead ruined a painting so breathtaking and magnificent. Everything around me seemed to dim a little, the stifling summer air became stale and unbearable around me. Days passed, Cosmo returned each day. So did I, as if revisiting a crime scene. The smell of chalk rose in the atmosphere each time a train pulled into the station. I tried to devise a different plan, the guilt only making me more desperate to push them together. But each day came and went and nothing viable came to me. I wondered if maybe I was wrong to be so invested in the lives of two strangers who were unaware of my existence nor my attempted interference. Thursday came and Cleon didn’t show. Something deep within me feared that he might never show again.

But then he did. On Friday, there Cleon was, the paintings still loosely held under his arm, the lighter in his hand, the alluring look upon his face. I smiled to myself and felt the guilt untie itself from me and swirl away into nothing. Cosmo caught sight of Cleon from the other side of the platform and he began ascending two flights of stairs to exit the platform. I did not believe the sight before me. I saw him walking on the bridge above the tracks. I was speechless, transfixed by the sight before me, not letting myself fully believe it. Yet there he was, descending the steps onto this side of the platform. Cleon noticed him then as he made his way to him, he smiled tenderly. For the first time, I saw Cosmo smile. It was genuine and unashamed. It was a heavenly sight.

“I saw what happened to one of your paintings last week, I’m truly sorry. I caught a glimpse of it, very briefly. It was beautiful.”

“Thank you, I painted it the day just before it flew away. But it’s okay, there are plenty of moonlit nights to come.” Cleon said.

“Could I see some more paintings of yours?” Cosmo inquired.

Cleon beamed and said “I’d love to.” They drifted to a bench, Cleon pocketed his lighter and began showing his paintings. 

And then. I see a newspaper, the wind has turned the pages for me. The headline reads “1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF BELOVED ACTIVIST’S TRAGIC SUICIDE”. I look closer, a picture of a man that looks just like me. I look even closer, and begin to read. “It’s been one year since Oliver Banks’, 42, suicide in July which sparked a national conversation about what can be done to prevent suicide on the London Network Railways…”. Before I could read anymore, somebody picked up the newspaper as they walked by, and it was gone. But I didn't need to read more. My death had been so hazy in my mind and it had suddenly come into focus, so clear before me now. I took a moment to consider, I had tried hard not to think about what had happened partly because it frustrated me to only have blurry details, but also because part of me knew what I'd done and couldn't face it. But here I was, facing it. Staring right at it, studying it, it studying me. And I grieved, right there in front of the many lovers and dreamers and cynics and CEO’s and artists and parents and children, I'd never felt love for myself like this. I’d never wanted to hold myself so dearly, I'd never wanted to comfort myself more. As if I was the child in need of protection. I understood I had suffered the greatest loss- my own life- but I could no longer remember what pain, loneliness or grief troubled me. It was lost too. And the sunlight shone down into the station, and I stepped right into it, I stepped so willingly into it, and now I could feel the warmth so intensely and I felt as though I was drifting into the sun. The last thing I saw was Cleon and Cosmo boarding a train together, going wherever dreamers go. Then, stepping through the veil of golden luminescence, time melted away peacefully and I became just a glimmer of light upon the floor.