What else can be said
He stepped out into the empty parking lot and looked up into a grey clouded sky and the wind blew from the west and the snow drifted across the bare asphalt and swirled about his feet. There was death in the world and he had forgotten about it. He barely felt the cold wind. He barely felt anything. There would be time for that later and he did feel it later. He closed his eyes and later came. He was sitting at the kitchen table alone and he wept and when he finally thought about it he realized it was dark out. All he knew was that it had been light out when he’d sat down and he did not know how long he’d been sitting there. Then he opened his eyes again. He did not remember where he would be and then he looked. A beige sedan went by down Broadway and he was still in the empty parking lot and the wind rose up and the heavens churned immense and unhurried. The clouds grey and burdened with something, maybe. There is light up there he thought. He wanted there to be. But there is so much goddamned darkness. There’s so much darkness you’d never even know.
His phone rang in his pocket again. He didn’t pick it up. He didn’t look at it. What else could be said. There was no coming back. There was just time mounted up long enough to finally be okay and then that ran out too. He turned and glanced at the warm light shining through the big sliding glass door behind him. There was movement inside. People were eating and drinking. Christmas and New Years had just passed. Perhaps this would be the last holiday party and now there was only the long cold grey of winter ahead. And of course there would be another winter to follow that. But he did pick up his phone. He listened for a while and said something and listened again and then hung up. Then he made his way back into the glowing light inside and the eating and drinking he’d not altogether forgotten about. He would have to say he was leaving and why and they would be reminded too and that would be that. And then they’d forget again and that would be that too. What else could be said about it.
