Between the Sky and the Sea.

Unloved! He chewed it over as if it were some delicate precious insect that he had out of sheer hunger thrust into his mouth. Hopeless, this he treated as a seasoning to the insect, he sprinkled it through his mind and here and there it either added to the foul taste of the insect or lessened it considerably. For surely to be hopeless is a settling thing, what mistakes and curses befall you it is a matter of inevitability. Yet like grotesque food with the right chef it may transpire that it becomes a delicacy, rare wondrous and inspiring. Yet this he knew was just sugar coating the dreadful truth of it all. As if his mind was some archaic bell, the words forlorn and dire clanged with indecent severity, reaching lofty decibels that they should shake God himself.

He was always picking up the loose change on how to take criticism so he often didn’t, like charity bags he would leave monstrous deposits of criticism in public places for anyone to claim, it was the least he could do for himself. The old rhythm bell seemed to be calling more anti-worshippers to his mind, he recalled the phrase “…you are like a shadow, a temporary thing blighting other peoples summers, thankfully you always pass on…” he wondered if the women who had said that to him had some deeper meaning, possibly she resented her youth spent on the fatherless grey white coast successfully failing to see the point.

He decided to get creative, ‘Unloved Shadow’ to him it sounded like a super villain, but one with a sense of humour and in the end invariably aided the hero to defeat a greater nemesis. ‘Dire Hopeless’ at first sounded rather poetic, like a heroine bemused and tormented in a gritty western, this in a remarkably comforting way made himself the lone hero, riding into town from the feral wildness, no badge, no point to prove just a whisky thirst and a quick trigger finger. He was enjoying the adventures of Captain Unloved Shadow and Miss Dire Hopeless on the jolly ship HMS Albatross when like a musket shot from a smoky barrel she docked heavily and non delicately at the café table.

-Did you read my letter? Stern greying eyes like two impossibly bleak winters grinding a steel bridge into submission, a polite collapse.

-Would you like a jam scone or some hot chocolate? He smiled.

-What did you think of my letter? The steel bridge creaks.

-A lot of it missed me, but this unloved business as thrown me completely. He frowned without sincerity, merely assuming a projected frown when hurt by some one, should mean something.

-I said you will forever be unloved because you are unlovable, I should know! She pushed her wintry eyes into their lofty sockets, fighting back tears yet the clouds did not recover and it is well known every winter must have its rain.

-I have been unloved, is that what you mean? He frowned.

-What the fuck are you saying? A great weight of wintry snow settles on the bridge, its spine already twisted begins to sink becoming a thin and frail river fish.

-You are being very cold hearted drink some hot chocolate.

-I’m not cold, I am angry, what did my letter tell you, what did you make of it? He saw a warming in her chill cerebral meridian.

-Well, I know you are frustrated about something! Bemused fishermen with a rifle trudging through the early morning dew webs of a deer hunt, impossible to catch anything without a boat he thinks.

-Frustrated I was frustrated four months ago, I am leaving you today I just wanted you to actually feel something!

-Yeah what was all that about me being a shadow on other peoples summer trips to the beach?

-What?

-Shadows can be mysterious you know, maybe nobody understands the shadow!

-What are you talking about? That was not me you idiot!

-It doesn’t matter! The sky and the river collide then pass each other with unspoken intolerances, she gathers her purse and coat he gathers his scattered apologies that rest like warm cigarette ends in an expensive ashtray.

Strange that it should come to this, she had the appearance of a compassionate women imploring meaningless hurts through the opaque glass of a fish tank, he being the fish looking out trying to think like she thinks yet the water between them consigned to combine with the sky. His aquatic limbs would waft him through the sails of a sunken ship, to her a silly non pleasing thing to him all the apologises the world would ever mutter. His answer meets her question as the sea does the sky, never quite completely. She leaves under the command of composed rehearsed manoeuvres, her bitter mood remains, awkward in hangless gestures, like a shy old friend offering apologies from mute simplicity.

The waitresses eyes suggested prey, every near kill that had scarred her hind now surfaced again and he felt responsible for everything; she too had a sky break ferociously above her head. His sense of despair became hers, the waitress froze beneath the penetrating belly of the café lights; he swallowed some apologetic air and sadly, bitterly she too seemed to be looking into the great fish tank wording out silent sentences. His limbs fall like smooth pebbles deposited heavily on the multi coloured fish tank carpet. She smiles un-forgivingly, quietly clearing the cups but not the air. The space between them wordless as cold as bone, loneliness as a wide widening waters; to play the doomed forever mariner between the sky and the sea.

-Unloved?