Desperation’s Silence
Was it courage
Or sheer impetuosity?
His lights were out
Around his door
The sliver of illumination from the hall was dim
Maybe…
He tapped on the wall
Separating their studio apartments
Wanting so to hear a response,
Even if she was known to be mostly deaf
Her old age suggested she wouldn’t be upset
For he had been told
With age comes understanding
Right?
For him,
This clink of a world
Had replaced a willing turnkey
With a dead bolt
So dependable
Few had ever acknowledged his existence.
He returned to bed
Lifted the window shade
Even the moon hid from him.
He listened
There was nothing
Save the sound of his heartbeat.
He pounded his pillow into shape…
And beyond.
Tomorrow would be better
Wouldn’t it?
Most everyone goes through one or more periods in their lives when accepting aloneness is difficult… often impossible. Such a person lived in my brownstone on 79th street, just across from Central Park… so long ago. His sharing of the story has always stayed with me, most likely because I was grateful to have not experienced his degree of loneliness. (Prosetry/flash fiction - Image by pinterest)
And then, there was the widow who lived across from me in West Virginia, nearly blind from macular degeneration and worse, a 93-year-old bachelor living in the stone house below with only Herbert Morrison of Hindenburg fame and I to help him. Herb did much more than I did, and I wonder what happened to him after I left.
Ron