Who Do You Walk With

Some of us are loved until where we end and others begin becomes impossible to define. I am not that man.

I walk, smiling at certain faces on the street, known to the point of small talk, but that love which makes the smallest detail of a life significant is not mine to enjoy. My life is defined by my ability to pay the rent, or not fall ill, behaving at all times, in a way which does not cause alarm: those are my boundaries and my limitations.

The clock stopped while I was doing other things and now I find myself living a repetitious daze, repeating patterns, chewing thoughts I should have digested years ago. Gnawing at life with polite barbarity, dressed for the weather but never company. Talking to myself in urgent undertones. One of the mad ones, an anecdote in other people’s lives. A man who gambled regardless of the costs until he found himself living beyond all normal definition.

I am that harmless eccentric who opens doors for strangers; who finds his solace in the written word where men as lost as me, wrote their dreams and knitted stories out of their imagination because in stories they always found some company.