Musing on Life
It’s one of those days you’ve experienced before. Am I going to lose a loved one? It’s touch and go. A lot of people talk, but who really cares? When the loved one’s gone, people bawl like they cared. Fuck that. Skendong is once on Earth. I’m acting… on an iron bench, Butler Street Lock 81.
The canal murmurs. Water flows to its destination. Cool and rhythmic against the scorching afternoon sun.
A young Black lady sits opposite. Her little daughter, barely walking, blissfully playing. She almost rolls herself and her baby pram into the canal, but her mother jumps up and saves her. Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration.
A young mixed-race lady with curly kinked hair, two-toned, in a white top and black trousers… sits nearby, absorbed in her phone until a white male dressed in all black drops beside her.
They are chatting as I twist the red cap off the MAGNUM between my legs and take two sips.
Now a blonde lady is jogging straight toward me, wearing a pink sports bra and shorts so tight I see her pum pum print. I am seriously distracted, however, when she squirts: “Have you seen a cockapoodle along the canal?” “I haven’t, sorry,” I reply instinctively. She runs up to a couple dragging a suitcase, then sprints back past me.
She’s lost her cockapoodle.
I take another two sips of MAGNUM, thinking, I must note this moment.
Head down, tapping on the QWERTY, then screech! A white car tears down Holland Street, takes a sharp left, smashes its bumper on the high curb, and speeds off. I look, waiting for the trailing cops but there’s nothing.
It’s only been thirty minutes. More speeding cars, more people drifting by. Horrible day personally, but I’m calm.
I take two more sips of MAGNUM, tentatively stroll home, and aim to compose myself.