Friday afternoon she reclines upon the mattress composed of springs and minimal padding. She reaches over, grabs a strawberry, and bites into it, caressing it with her lips as if it were her lover. Nothing has touched her lips besides the edge of a teacup or the steel of a utensil for a long while. She rubs her lips together, feeling the bits of chapped skin. The skin on your lips is thinner than other parts of your body, which accounts for it's speedy dehydration. She considers drinking some water. Water is so important for your skin, she reminds herself, and reaches past the strawberries for her water bottle. It tastes old, like barely chlorinated pool water. She shifts her weight, simultaneously smacking her gums, willing enough saliva to form and wash away the taste of decayed water.
Her sheets are a mess, wrinkled in snowy rivulets and mounds. The tiny rips show the tan-and-cream striped mattress beneath, How many people have slept on this same mattress, she thinks to herself. How many men, women, children, homeless, rich? The window, pushed open for ventilation, allows the sounds of the city to waft over her. The consistent drone of construction machinery, revving of a car's engine, scraping of shovels on concrete, indistinguishable chatter of pedestrians, these are the sounds of London. She thinks to the sounds that she loves so well: the wind fingering its way through fragile spring leaves; birds voicing their refrains in the cool of the morning or evening; the soft breathing of nature, rustling and stretching, surrounding itself around her; his voice in the morning whispering "I love you" as he heads off to another day of work. None of these are here in the city. They are thousands of miles away, an ocean and a continent between, it seems. It always seems.
Pollution and clouds filter the sunlight that comes through the open window. No streams of yellow light here, just a one-dimensional glow, nearer to a fluorescent bulb than sunlight. I think that is why kids have so much trouble staying awake in school, she decides: fluorescent lighting. The teachers always keep the blinds closed to prevent distraction, locking the students into an artificially lit box while they lecture. This city light, with its density of smog, is almost the same as those lights: dim and dampening of the senses. Though not always: there was five minutes of unadulterated incandescence in the West End this afternoon; and yesterday, she reminds herself, yesterday I ran in the park with the sun in my face. It is not always so dark.
She yawns. I wonder how silly I look when I open my mouth like a lion, she vaguely wonders. Not important. Moving on.
I want to run, she decides. But not today. Her muscles are too sore today. Tomorrow in the park, she tells herself, smiling. A real park in the middle of a city: trails, animals that are not wearing jackets, booties, or leashes, and grass. She misses the feel of the cool of shaded grass upon her bare toes: the thin soft grass of the north, Kentucky Bluegrass, rather than the stiff carpet of St. Augustine in the south. She doesn't even know what kind of grass grows in London. Most of the green spaces are dirt and pigeons. Oh, how she longs for the solitude of nature. Not solitude as in being alone, but solitude as in remoteness. Away from the city, the noise... The noise, she realizes, is gone for a few seconds. Silence on this city street? She closes her eyes, imbibing the few moments of the song she has missed so much. Then a motorcycle guns its way down the pavement, its rider hurrying to God knows where.
Those few moments were enough, at least for today.
No comments:
Post a Comment