Legless

Legless.

He stands on the pavement, under the sign, in exactly one place.         

   Wobbling, swaying, leaning this way, then that way. Never setting off but constantly threatening to. Planted and yet unsafe. One foot occasionally lifts and flails and his arms fly out, like a schoolboy’s playground airplane, seeking equilibrium. Finding balance then losing it again. He is as helpless as a one legged man, with nowhere to sit, putting on a single sock.        

    The raincoat his wife once bought him for their holiday in the Highlands is streaked with something foul smelling and his shoes have only one pair of laces between them. There is a fleck of spittle at the corner of his mouth. His eyes are dark and unfocused, the irises filling the socket. The whites are gone behind and there are salted tears in them, either of frustration or anguish, it is hard to tell.

    He received news today that he couldn’t bear and so broke a fifteen year promise and went in to that gritty, smoky heavenly room and sat upon a stool and said the words he hadn’t uttered for an age and the bartender looked up and without hesitation poured him a glass, unknowing of his part in the breach of a covenant  made many years before.

    And he drank, and he ordered again, and he drank, and he ordered again. And it was as if there had never been a time when he hadn’t done this. 

    He is outside now, in the cold and the rain, and he is unable to move. He knows that to take a step is to fall and to feel the hard concrete on his cheek. And he thinks he will not get up again. He will just lie there and weep. 

    And he tries to remember how it felt to not be this thing he is now. It was just hours ago and yet it might as well be years. He is no longer that man. It took him an age to build that man and an hour to destroy him utterly. 

    And he wonders if he always knew it would end this way and if he did why did he not change course? Why did he plough on regardless? And the answer comes to him. 

    Because he loves this feeling. This catastrophic collapse of will; this giving in; this succumbing to the chaos; this abandonment of hope. Because without hope there is no disappointment and he has been disappointed — and he has disappointed. 

    He looks up at the sky and laughs. A maniacal laugh. 

    A passer by steps into the road to avoid going near him, failing to understand him.