Late afternoon.

A time when you suddenly realize it’s been a while, maybe, since you’ve eaten, and you’ve spent your day walking among the ruins of a time and way that has faded away, when the sight of an unused and broken phone booth fills you with a sudden, sharp pain for no good reason at all. You spent your day tracing curves, gingerly touching sharp arrows, following broken tubing and rust, noting the beauty of a fallow and almost ancient time, and a faint melancholy settles over you like a thin blanket. You lean back in your car, the seats hot with the impatience of wanting to be somewhere, anywhere other than here, in this wrecked land, and just when you think you can’t stand it any more, can’t take the destruction, the sun gently lays its hands on your shoulders and says softly, don’t worry, let’s try again tomorrow, your work is done today. Rest now, and you can start again tomorrow. And you do.

May 6, 2013