LA was shyly shedding tears. A light rain on dirty streets in April.
Sophia walked past people forgotten. Faces, clothes…the eyes of the underneath. Each one unique, but the same. A mix of colors that eventually becomes gray. What color is all that is discarded?
Ambient faint echo of an obituary never published. Dead names of stars in black and white. Unremembered souls living in the purgatory before dead.
All that is left of them. All that they are.
Her pace was slow and steady and caught nearly each drop on her hair, her face…her clothes had slowly become heavy.
The lace. Faux feathers and bug eyed dark glasses.
Stacked heel black boots.
Never ending, half smoked cigarette.
She walked with purpose and disregard. A ghost among ghosts.
Passing storefronts gated up that once had people walking in and out all day. Phantoms of life long past. She turned a corner, just off Vine…marked by the thrift store she had shopped at once or twice. Or maybe had palmed a scarf under a coat. All at the end of can’t be washed anymore. Lose the smell. Never become clean or new again.
The breath around her…in the air…was stale. Thick.
Immune to the wash of rain.
This is all that is left.
All that you gave…had been…ends up here.
The faded beauty of the stucco, art deco, once meaningful building came upon her in a second glance of unconscious peripheral.
The arch to the doorway, foyer, steps…all in one, ragged red carpet and the smell of wet dog and nicotine. All through the sepia filter of memory.
The reek of decay and misery stuck itself to her as she slowly made the steps up. Walk the hall of doors that all looked the same and hid lives in various stages of one more day.
Her loose fist and knuckles hesitated to knock at a meaningless room.
Behind was a lifetime of bad memories spotted with a few birthday cakes and car rides to the desert.
Her dad was on the other side last breath coming.
She had spent the last few days semi frozen in her own apartment. Thawing to be able to move. Time passed as shadows moving across the unmatched side table and lamp, worn area rug, pilling sofa, and neglected kitchenette…but she was locked, too much on her mind. This was a normal state. So many questions, few answers, born to carry the weight of irrelevance that only drugs and mocking with fierce contempt could remedy.
Her ailing father was another brown leaf on a plant she only watered when it was wilted to the point of choking…gasping for attention enough to take in a breath.
The lost vision of a 9 year old, hair blowing strands, curled… head out a car window on an uninterrupted road that somehow led here was enough to keep her discouraged and rotting…the source of the stench saturating everything.
The crowded space in her mind, meaningless considerations, unconnected thoughts that disappeared like cars on a roller coaster with random track missing. It all fell off into nothingness and picked up again somewhere else.
It was all running out…epilogue unresolved but imminent.
With chapped lips and dark circles under her eyes, she had to walk those stairs, stall down the hallway, and knock on a door not knowing what was next.
I’ve known you my whole life.
I can’t be somewhere else while all of it fades away for good.
Better or worse.
You’ll see it in my eyes.
I won’t speak the words my mouth means to make.
I’ll stand by you and let you see all of what became of me.
We’ll both be sad for a thousand reasons.
There will be a smile hidden beneath it all, but it won’t last long.
I’ll feel your hand for one last time.
She’ll walk out of that room with one more thing in her life gone.
Left to wonder what will eventually have to leave or what she’ll have to let go of to ever shake off….all of it.