Rosenrot IV

    It’s a warm night, late night. Half-empty bottle of chardonnay, two mugs, a blanket. There’s a plastic table and the metal skeleton of a parasol; two plastic chairs are bolted to the ground, at a cheap-looking rooftop, adorned by dead plants. We’re not sitting on the chairs, but at the edge of the roof, watching the movement down there at the empty street, devoid of life.
   It’s one of those nights. I don’t know why I’m here, just am; the wine doesn’t give resolution. Wishing my head was full of thoughts I sip again from the mug, think about this situation, think about my situation. Where’s the poetry in all of this? Drowsy life in shades of gray can’t become art.
   “Maudite soit la nuit aux plaisirs éphémeres où mon ventre a conçu mon expiation,” she says, then sips from the mug too. Down there is a hooker, beside her is a drunk man. They get in the car and vanish, the only car in that street where parking is prohibited. “Elle-même prépare au fond de la Géhenne les bûchers consacrés aux crimes humains.”
   Nothing else will happen from this point. Nothing else of matter that could apply to the external world. Inside of me raged a battle, dry and silent, from inside the trench, the pockets of aces and kings. 

   I didn’t feel dirty, in the West, a sniper. They blew up, the people sleeping in front of me, they blew up and I didn’t feel dirty. “Why do they die?”, I questioned, there wasn’t a satisfying answer. They kept dying, over and over, inside my head. “Was I them?”, I asked out loud, to myself, but she didn’t give me a satisfying answer. I sipped from the mug, another finger of chardonnay inside of me. Could I ever be stopped?
   I spat a gob into the air, at the reality in front of me. A big ball of spit that I didn’t watch as it fell. When it hit the ground there was an echo, like a scream to the abyss, and my whole body tingled with the idea of that sound. With the possibility of art, of my body hitting the asphalt, of a body hitting the asphalt. That thought turned my attention to the one beside me. When my eyes reached her face, her eyes were already on me. Those eyes reflected the same idea, the same spirit inside my skull. I never loved this woman. I could never love her, but there was a kiss. Two people kissed under a blanket, at the edge of the roof of a four story apartment building that night. But what could it ever mean in an artless night?
   She asked,
   “What’s in your mind right now?”
   “An open door. Nothing else”, I responded.
   “How come I know what you’re actually thinking, though?”
   And since I wouldn’t answer, after a minute, after a sip of wine,
   “Look-ing-down, roof-top.
   Who-will-push-the-oth-er-first?
   In-stinct. Love-af-fair."
   With a smile, “What you think?”, but I still wouldn’t answer. 

   If silence becomes an integral part in the dynamic of any relationship, it could never be mutual when the feeling is unusual. Two watchers. A night guard, a depressed housewife. I stare at every side, every angle; I can spot a potential evil-doer within every nook and cranny. She watches me, her arm isn’t around my waist anymore. She watches me, itching for a concrete answer; what good is a PhD certificate when the answer to the problem at hand can’t be found inside a book? When to question is to accept defeat. It’s a kind of despair I cannot feel tonight, sipping of the chardonnay, three, maybe four fingers.
   “How much did you take today?”
   "Plenty."