Sunlight slips through the holes in my curtains, ragged and torn as they are. I stay silent some mornings, lay in bed and judge the movements of the world outside from the sanctuary I know so well. The walls in my room are painted haphazardly, streaks of unfinished colour on grim white with photos stuck with cellotape here and there. I don’t have the energy to create movements if I know my work is to go unnoticed. My mother pretty much leaves me alone, but that’s another story for another time, perhaps.
From my window, I see the town in the light it doesn’t wish to be seen—the rows of grey houses and tired, empty warehouses. An era of work at an end and a loss as to where to go from here. My dad worked here before he died, in a factory down the way. He never told me about his job, and I never asked. I just looked into the empty eyes of his dreams unfulfilled and knew it couldn’t be the life for me.
I slip out of bed and run my hands through my hair, eyes half closed. I take a lighter and burn the edges of my frayed pants before I put them on. Loose straps hang down from the knees, and a small tear lies on the pocket ‘round the back. And I count to ten before leaving the bed, an old habit that I just can’t lose.
I open the curtains before I leave the room, stepping over unwashed clothes and worn out shoes. I press play on my walkman, and an old jazz tape I found lying around my mother’s room spools into existence. I pull up my hood as I leave the house. A car drags past me fast with billowing clouds of smoke drifting up from the exhaust. I watch as particles mix in the air around me and drift into nothing.
Lighting a cigarette like fine art, slowly and carefully, the flame licking the tobacco’s edges, dead leaves turning an orange glow within my grasp.
It was the winter I rode the subway, my face looking into the glass and the city passing me by with every movement I didn’t make. Machinery combining with some unnatural force to create movement, velocity, speed. Fusion of elements, the darkness of the tunnels through which we pass awoken by the cold light of sun on a winter’s day.
The icy layer cracked beneath my feet as I stepped from the train on those bitter winter nights, the laces on my shoes undone and tattered beneath my feet. I liked to watch the city illuminated, random lights on random floors in those huge monolithic buildings that seemed to crack the clouds, shattering the fragile white pockets of freedom that hang above us in manners that I could never even pretend to comprehend in the days of lockers and school buses and cartoons on Saturday mornings when nothing seemed to matter but the days and the nights, the gentle passing of time.
Paul Lynch is a 20 year old writer from Liverpool, in England. His work has been published by various online and offline publications, and he is currently writing a book about animals. Paul travels a lot and got a job last summer writing for a travel catalogue, taking trains through Europe. Aside from that, he tends to bum around menial jobs he dislikes and writes long rambling letters at three in the morning. You can visit Paul’s personal site here. He also composes music, and you can download his album online.