Big Blue Beautiful

I could never sleep in. Even after the kind of shit I got up to last night. I just can’t. My inner self doesn’t accept the idea of wasting away the day time. The sun. Its glorious rays. Try as I might this early morning to close my eyes and quieten my thumping heart beat, no sleep could come my way. I knew it was a waste. From shots to club to bathroom to shots to more shots to another club to bathroom. That formula doesn’t go to bed very easily. But there I was trying my best to force my eyes shut when my body was still vibrating from everything I absorbed and consumed through the night.

Annoyed at myself, I got out of bed and walked the streets. The sun was peeping but not peaked. The swishing sounds of broomsticks could be heard. The toil of a jangly bicycle ticketing up the street. I folded my arms around myself. It wasn’t cold. But I felt I had to warm my insides. A brief but brisk wind caught up. I lifted my eyes to see an elderly woman bent low with chewing stick between her lips, plowing away at rubbish on the street. She looked up at me and gnawed at the chewing stick. Somewhere in the rubbish she was sweeping was a sachet of Castle Bridge Gin.

I almost gagged but managed to pull myself past her. All of a sudden the night was with me and inside me. Try as I might to grab myself, to squeeze myself till my innards were out, I couldn’t. I wanted to spill myself onto the world and be relieved of everything. But all I felt was a hollow inside me. Nothing. Or something like nothing. I had to stop myself and cough. A heaving dry cough. Those ones that never end because you can’t get out the phlegm stuck in your throat.

Crouched with my hands wrapped around myself. The jangly bicycle had ridden by now, clicking with each revolution of its pedal. And so it went past me.

What a waste.

Then the wind caught up with me again. And this time it lifted my eyes beyond the street into the sky. And indeed it was peerlessly blue. The sky. Sparse clouds plopped here and there only furthered the blueness of it. If you could call it that. Blueness. And from left to right, beyond the rising edges of the city, the blue collected the world in its pearl.

I stared into its gaze for however long it seemed and it seemed to stare right back at me. And I thought, ‘What’s the sky made of?’

My arms were aloft, as if in prayer. If only it could save me.