Commemoration

The black leather gloves stay over their big shade on a panel under a sleepless silence. People on the street stopped me to ask how it went, their curiosity bigger than their worry, and they didn’t even try to hide it. I said nothing. I looked them into their eyes with that disarming stare that I had earned, something I’m proud of as it sends the intruders away. Their fear of me always amuses me. Do you like that stare? I think you do. It makes you want to fuck me. You said it once, little compliments here and there that I gather with care and put into the box, that blue velvet one that I keep in my drawer, your photo under my pillow, my underwear carefully folded on the wooden floor, so I sleep naked as you told me so. I do almost everything that you taught me, and I hate it. Over the pillow on the bare wall, there is a paper heart. A heart that opens up to a poem I wrote about my dreams that heightened my spirit. And my dreams are. Being away from you and then unable to breathe normally, but fighting the urge like crawling my tired body desperately into the moist, slippery mud under the rain and the barbed wire. Who I am is long forgotten. I need you to constantly remind me, and I hate that, too, as I’m already a man with a purpose and a dream. I forgot my name. Please remind me of my name. Who am I? Now, far away, I am sitting on a bench, my hands clasped in prayer, feeling the sand on my feet and the shells. Here, the dunes stop the manic air, where the seagulls scream aggressively. I’m getting into the sea, the black sea of tragedy. It’s cold, freezing, spitting out white foam. I take off my shirt and fold my trousers carefully next to me. There is nobody there. Even if it’s a sunny day, there is no one to feel pity for me, a pitiful person, to wake me up this time for good. I almost hear you cursing at me while you break a bottle with the right hand- the hand that holds the cigarette. Is it a good thing to throw me into that sea? Is it not a stupid escape? I’m made of elastic - the sea won’t hold me down, and then I’ll float like a naked idiot on the water onto that tremendous sea for who knows how long? Maybe till the seagulls eat me slowly, and then there’s nothing left except bones, bright white bones of a reminiscence: Of a man with a stare and no name, the man that lived a life of anonymity in the shadow of his glory. You promised me much but didn’t live long enough to achieve anything magnificent.