There was a heart in Central Park. It was lying there in the curled leaves and the grass saying goodnight. It beat a bit but was slowing. I was sitting on the park bench watching. Nobody cared. The idiots were oblivious. I was alone as usual, trying to get some fresh air and think about things that didn’t have to do with the mad city. I thought about love, with that heart lying there all derailed and fucked up and crying. Imagination haunts us. I have nothing left but this walk I take every day. Why do I have to end up seeing someone’s cut out heart lying in the grass like that? My apartment isn’t far, it’s small, and only about 723 square feet, but I like the tight corners and the lack of space for all those pitiful material things. There were dreams upon a time, you see. They had ripples like fire set on fire. So maybe that’s my own heart lying in the litter.

What words we breathe. What words we digest. What am I? A bucket of skin ready to toss? I am a slice of time in flesh. I sit at the counter and eat my food like everyone else. But I know I am different. Some birds came and pecked at the lawn. I thought about the peace of modest brick houses on a tree-lined street in a cozy suburb of Chicago. I can hear the lake smashing against the shore ever so gently. Dad looked out at the sea, and I wished I was alone so I could smoke a fag. Big jets scraped against the sky, the massive whirl of the heartless city of souls hummed all around.

Sometimes I can’t breathe; like a diner joint in T or C and the toast was good for my heart and the local souls all around me glowed a fluorescent green. I got lost in the desert, totally immersed in isolation, and I read On The Road by a trickle of water under the sun. On the outside world, everyone was dead. I didn’t have anybody—ever so it seems. There was but sun and sand and coyotes and my own wayward mind settling in the dust of the earth. And here the world goes on and a man like me doesn’t know where to step—I’m in it, but out of it. Turn a page. Hold your head in your hands as the mighty tangerine sun slips away. I’m a disposable heartbeat. Sin is no longer an option to avoid. I wish I was a normal man of love. I got off the bench and stretched in front of strangers. The walk home was a bit windy, but I didn’t mind. I don’t mind anything anymore. Life is life. Love is a crap shoot. Maybe the past is gone, but still alive in the hurting ways. My apartment is on the third floor. I go home like I always do, alone, one stair at a time in a hollow hallway. I open the door, and everything is butterscotch dim. So, this is the end, I wonder, solo in a glazed apartment. I’ll wander after them—chased by the blue ghost in my grandmother’s guts.

By

Aaron Echoes August