An Electrical Storm Put to Sleep

It was the beginning of summer. One early morning, slipping between the shadows, I left home. I hurried down the streets to Digbeth, underneath a bored, bone-white moon. In this fictional city of mine, where man-made dreams tower above me, I entered the stomach of a machine and I was carried away to Manchester on highways, where souls move aimlessly in all directions. And I was one of them. With nothing to offer except my own confusion.

It felt so good to expect nothing for the first time in such a long while. No hope, no anticipation. Either A last farewell, or the start of a season in green. Or none of the above. It made no difference. My thoughts raced each other out of my head, growing wings and wheels that carried them into the unknown. And I was calm.
As the engine roared I peered above the sunglasses and above them, above me, airplanes seemed to hover beyond the skies. Indifferent metal gods, going about their business. I wondered for a second, how her life might be, among them. And if she looks down sometimes, at our ant-like buildings and wonders what's happening to the people she cares about.

The car stopped. A faint noise coming from a jet plane signaled my arrival, like an alarm clock for my sleeping courage. I got out of the car and went out to meet her.
We hugged in a hotel hallway and I dissolved in those arms. There are parts of me that fell to the floor and broke that day, when I broke free from her embrace. Entire ice statues of emptiness that I have built for months shattered and melt into the ground.

So We drank champagne and we talked. And in the way she sat on that hotel bed and I, on that armchair, at that particular moment in time, amidst the chaos in which our lives are so deeply submerged, a spark of order could be seen there. A carelessness that most of us run frantically towards yet never fully grasp it. It was there. And I sighed for a second, not knowing if I'll get to feel it again.

After a while we went out. He had some more drinks. The sky seemed a bottle of wine in which clouds floated like rosy petals. We walked among strangers, our eyes obscured by beautiful lenses. There was an ocean of sound pouring in the streets that day, but I was deaf. I could only hear her language, slowly being absorbed on my skin.
Eventually, we got back to her room. We sat in silence, each on his side of the bed. I knew I didn't love her and I knew she didn't love me;
and yet there was a sense of defeat in that silence.
And in those last seconds of being a awake I could feel that little spark of order dissolving back into the chaos of things unsaid and things unlived.