Contact

For a lot of people, grief is one overwhelming wave that crashes through their lives and drags them out into an ocean of hopelessness. For me, it was more like a gentle tide repeatedly lapping at the shores of my sanity until it eventually eroded the foundations of who I was. Depression, they called it. But today I would finally be rid of it.

    By the time the sun had trudged breathlessly to its zenith, the plaza below was a buzz of activity. A chorus of overlapping conversations filled the air, performed by a choir of shoppers, day drinkers, and stall vendors. I sat at a bench across from The Knight’s Arms pub, a mock-Tudor building that felt misplaced among the modern glass and steel buildings of the rest of the plaza. A couple of its more inebriated customers were out the front, having a slurred conversation through pillars of cigarette smoke.

    I sat there for an hour or two, watching people come and go. Everybody in a rush to get nowhere in particular; nobody stopping and taking in one another. The only human interaction came in the form of a lady dressed in a light frock and a dark frown throwing some litter at my feet as if I didn’t exist. I felt like a stranger in my own city.

    As I got up to leave, I heard the faint fluttering of wings to my right. I looked up to see a starling flying past me. It was a far cry from the majestic wildlife you see in naturalist oil paintings, more a frowsy, urban reflection of the majesty of nature. Its feathers looked like tattered fabric as they fought against the breeze. It soared up to the roof of The Knight’s Arms and into its nest, where it disappeared from sight. Despite the decimation of its home, it still found refuge in the harshest of conditions, among out-of-town drunkards and inner-city pollution. A battle against the odds won through prevailing determination. Or perhaps it just liked mock-Tudor décor. I lingered a moment longer before heading off across the plaza.

    I traipsed through the moving sea of people until I reached a cobbled side street. The street was laced with food stalls on either side, with queues of hungry customers snaking around them. Spirals of smoke rose up in the air from various pans and ovens. The overwhelming smell of herbs and spices made me realise I wasn’t hungry for anything that could be bought from a restaurant. I was starved of something else entirely.

    I pressed on down the street, pushing past impatient faces until I got to the end and out onto the main street. The street opened out onto the suspension bridge. Even through my jaundiced view it was a sight to behold. Over 2,000 feet of steel cables and iron bars woven into an undeniable achievement of modern architecture. The river 600 feet below it shimmered like crystals in the afternoon sun. It was a postcard scene and a snapshot from my earliest memories, coming here with my mother as a child. Age had in no way diminished its beauty. If anything, it was more valuable now than ever, like a painting that increases in value once the artist has passed away.

    Picturesque as it was, it still hadn’t escaped the suffocating clutches of capitalism, and vendors selling various tat lined the streets on the bridge. At the foot of the bridge, on the left side of the road was a small stall made of warped wood, that looked like a prop from the set of a western. In front of the stall was a veritable jungle of flowers for sale, the various colours blending together like patchwork. I sauntered over and smiled a greeting to the lady behind the counter at the stall. Her lips pursed into a pencil-thin smile that had all the warmth of a midwinter morning.

“Good afternoon,” I chimed, meeting her gaze. Her response came in the form of a nod of the head. “Lovely day, isn’t it?” I added, in a pathetic attempt to stoke a response out of the burnt ashes of this conversation. Another nod from the lady behind the counter.

    As with the rest of the city, she was more interested in the content of my wallet than the content of my heart. It didn’t matter much now anyway.

    “Do you have any chrysanthemums?” I asked, still scanning the spread of flowers on the ground and on the countertop.

    “We have whatever flowers you can see there,” she spat.

    “And are some of the flowers I can see there chrysanthemums?”

    “That depends if you can see any.”

    “Forgive me for presuming that the florist at a flower stall might possibly be able to advise me on what flowers they have.”

    She sighed theatrically before pointing to a bunch of flowers on the countertop. They were a vivid blend of red, white, and yellow. They were more beautiful than I’d imagined they’d be.

    “How much for one?” I asked.

    “One small bouquet is £12, a large bouquet is £16,” she replied, as if my very existence inconvenienced her.

    “How about just one flower?”

    “I don’t sell single flowers. You can get a small bouquet for £12, though.”

    “Well I only need one flower. How about I give you £12 and just take one.”

    Another sigh from the florist.

    “Fine,” she said, grabbing a yellow chrysanthemum from the bunch of them.

    “A red one, please. I’ve always thought I look quite good in red.” With another sigh she put the yellow flower back and pulled out a deep red one.

    “12 pounds,” she said. I handed her £20 and gave her the warmest smile I could muster, setting off down the bridge before she could hand me my change.

    I tucked the flower into a buttonhole on my jacket, and continued down the bridge, facing the sun. It was finally starting to feel warm. The wave of human traffic continued, with people rushing up and down the bridge. Some stopped to buy things from the various vendors. Others stopped to take pictures of themselves on the bridge - their smiles caught in a frozen moment in time before returning to their usual frowns off-camera.

    I got about 100 feet across the bridge and looked out at the river below. It offered up a glistening reflection of the sun high above it. The light danced on its surface. It was hypnotic. I looked back at the street on the bridge. In the crowd I noticed a young man walking towards me. I caught his attention by making eye contact.

    “Excuse me, have you got the time?” I asked with a smile. A final attempt to get some semblance of a connection with someone. Even just the actual time would have been nice enough. I was instead met with a break of eye contact and silence.

    I hauled myself up and sat on the ledge of the bridge. From where I was sat, I could see the iron beams on the underside of the bridge. On one of them, lying like a discarded ragdoll, I saw the emaciated carcass of a dead starling. Even an innate instinct to survive eventually gets extinguished in this city.

   I stood up on the ledge of the bridge. A few onlookers walking past stopped and looked up at me. Surrounded by watchful eyes yet none could see the actual problem. None of them actual seeing me; all of them just seeing the situation I’d created. Surrounded by hands and yet none of them to hold. Surrounded by people and not one friend. A few phones appeared in the hands of the onlookers. The watchful eye of their cameras ready to condemn my final moments to eternal celluloid. It was the only way anyone would remember me.

   I took my final step. For a moment I felt as though I was flying. And for a moment I didn’t feel alone.