Movement

She moved briskly through the wintry evening. Every step seeming to crack the frozen ground and threatening to gape open beneath her. She pulled the scarf tighter around her neck, not relishing the prospect of the walk home through suburban sprawl, but longing to find sanctuary in the warmth of home.

The day had been long and difficult as it always seemed to be. With her face pressed against the train carriage window her thoughts had tripped lightly over profound and flimsy ideas. Loathing the dreaded football matches that necessitated the cattle-like procession through the jungle of North London suburbia and contemplating the necessity of its function. Yet another social tool to delight and oppress the workers. Just another function of maintaining the social status quo.

Her eyes had scanned the carriage fleetingly, ready to duck or ignite conversation depending on what emotion the sight of someone she knew ignited. Her usual instinct was to hide. Running scared even from those who loved her was something she had been practicing since childhood. And all the analysis in the world could not explain this tint of social phobia. She had stretched her cold hands against the panes and waited for the chilled condensation to weave through her jacket lining to cool her burning skin. Making her feel something real.

So now as she stepped out into the world and bounded into her first few strides towards home, she tried not to dwell on those aching regrets of her life that seemed to be gripping her very being at the moment. Concentrating instead on the beat of the music, triumphing in the way it fed her soul, that organic nourishment that could only come from something as indefinable, as difficult to analyse or speculate upon, as music. There was no one around; she was alone, and as she raced herself home, she relished the lonliness, took refuge in its purity.A Ghost town of her past which was now comforting and new.

How to make sense of your life. That was the struggle right now. Hers felt like a hotchpotch of misjudgements and a patchwork of half-experiences. It seemed that at every juncture, life was there for the taking, offering itself up as fruitful fodder for her to devour. And yet, the eating, that part was always the hardest as the gnawing sense in the back of her mind that it could be poisoned, that it could be dangerous, that ultimately it would be safer to eat only part of that delicious feast, always seemed to win. Each time it did so, the relentless march of time ticked on and made the chance even more difficult to seize.

As she entered the house, with the lights left on in case of burglars and the cats gazing hungrily at her feet, she realised the need for her to reach out in the darkness for one more moment. To stretch and blink, and feel and smell. And as she slumped in the armchair of the living room looking into a blank night ahead, a decision was reached.