"Midnight" Part 5

I love it when the heavens meet the earth.

26th street, I yawn. Clouds are beginning to gather around my feet, carefully searching out the shadowy corners of the city. Lights stretch out and sounds dampen as the morning dwindles on. I enjoy fog as much as rain, almost as much as newly fallen snow, but not quite as much as pizza on a Saturday night with a few friends and a movie.

Yes, one could say that as far as material things go, pizza is my first love.

But my memory is like this fog. 

Imagine a lamp—the old-fashion, kerosene lamp used before the invention of the light bulb—being carried through a fog at night. It's not blinding, but pleasantly dim, swaying slowly this way and that, suspended and relaxed as it wanders through the milky atmosphere. It doesn't ignite the world around it, but the world around it can see it coming. 

Like a fog, I have trouble remembering things clearly. I know—it's a funny thing to hear from a young man of only twenty-three. In fact, when you think about it, it's ridiculous. For me, though, it seems true enough—unless my measurement of how clearly memories should surface is slightly lacking.

Memories, I believe, require more than just a picture in your head. Perhaps that's why I find them difficult to conjure correctly. I think memories should incorporate not only images and the senses but also emotion.

And there's the difficult part—replaying emotion.

25th street. A few cars rumble past, passing through street puddles like an early morning stretch. 

Of course a person can easily attach a scrolling marquee to an image in their head, flashing, 'This is where I felt betrayed,' and then attempt to recreate the feeling of betrayal. But what weight is carried when an emotion is just a title in your head? Where is the connection to the heart?

A cat mournfully sings from a passing alleyway. I glance left as two green eyes follow me from behind someone else's trash.

She, however, isn't foggy at all. I remember everything—every image, every sound, every sense, and I feel every emotion from the night she did not say goodbye.

24th street. One more block. 

Some might mistake my brokenness for romance—like a Hollywood love story. It's not so shallow. There wasn't a flirtatious first date and a first kiss after our serendipitous meeting, nor was there a second date followed by a heated night of passionate, guilt-free sex where the stars fell in line and the heavens declared that this is a good idea, so now it's time to move in with each other before we finally decide to marry and seal the deal with a ceremonial kiss. But then, for some unexplainable, unjustifiable reason, she decides that it's better that we 'just be friends' and breaks my heart into a million pieces, leaving me to cope with the pain, alone, while she flaunters off with someone new.

No, this is more gut-wrenching and complex. 

It's about a broken friendship.

23rd street. Flustered and exhausted, I cross the street. The effort of walking fifty city blocks is nothing compared to struggling through a few vivid memories.

My apartment building is at the end of the street. The fog is beginning to thicken. Street lights trail into the night as the plunk, plunk, plunk from a draining gutter echoes somewhere in the distance. My body is tired, but my mind is racing. 

Replaying heartbreak is a dangerous game. It's like shouting at an angry man or diving through loose snow in the mountains. Something's going to collapse. Memories begin to flood over like a river after rain. Assumptions well up from deep within confused situations and without warning an avalanche of misconceptions erupts into devastating, heart-wrenching, emotional pain.  

An old man, bent and tired, shuffles past on my left. I don't say anything. He mumbles reminders to himself.

Don't forget the cat food. Poor kitty looks so hungry.

Someone intelligent and wiser than me once said that assumptions are the termites of relationships.

This collapsing framework is full of them.

Droplets begin to form and trail down the silver surfaces of dimming street-lamps.

I love fog, but not in relationships, and especially not in memories. Even in painful situations, I want to remember how I felt. I don't want to become numb. It makes me think that my heart is growing cold, or even worse, turning to stone.

A heart of ice is infinitely easier to melt than a heart of stone. 

And I fear the day when I don't feel it anymore. I fear the day when her image is as numb and indifferent as my hands on this wet and chilly night.

I stop at 806, 23rd street and gaze upward. I can hardly see my seventh story window through the fog. I slowly climb the steps toward the entrance and squeeze past the glass door.

No mail. I don't know why I check. It's passing 5 a.m.. Habit, I guess. The elevator is out of order. I forgot about that. I glance toward the foot of the stairs…

…the seven stories of stairs.

Perfect.

It's going to be a long climb up