Past Midnight

I got out on the balcony. In the distance, white clouds flashed colors in silent lightning. The gods must have had a banquet. All smiling and laughing without a care in the world. I was one of them all my life but that night I lay on earth watching them. I drank a beer. Dark. And lit a cigarette. I felt heavy, like my organs were made of lead and they were about to fall like ripe apples on the floor of my stomach. The pressing weight of solitude. I wondered how fit I would be if I could exercise it. Like pushing weights in the gym. I felt my skin prickle.
Another night in which I m folded by the cool breeze, like a dark pancake filled with Guinness beer.
I thought of all the trains and planes that brought me where I am. Indifferent. Inert. Metallic teachers forcing me into experience.
That evening I felt like a corpse being brought here to hide from the sun forever. Dead, in the heart of the Renaissance.
Outside my window, the cars were lined up silently like soldiers going to war. A mechanical order to safe keep the flesh. The walking fortresses of uncountable living souls.
Trumpets rang in my ears. Dark night of the soul. I am running. Like a wounded animal. Like a scared child. Like a metaphor of fear. I am running from the cold of the continent. Of the whole world. Running from endless hours of labor. From a house with lawn and garage. From two children and their aspirations, with them unborn yet. I am running from the sun. My own god and protector. But to what good?
In a month or so I ll be off living in Alexandria, on the rippling sands of Egypt. But the cold follows. Slowly, it catches up. By January it will be freezing there as well. Where will I go from there? How long until I ll get tired? Until my shoes are worn out?
I am too young to accept defeat yet in the end it seems more and more inevitable. I wanted endless summer but whatever I do, snow swallows the desert within my ribs.
When the cold will dress me in its blue and purple garments I will know it is time to go home. But what is home these days? A hole in the ground on some secluded hill. My body, orphaned of life, will remain a stiff doll left to say: This was I, Marius Cristian, I did my best.
And I will sleep forever cradled by the sound of rain.