Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 1.6

 I lost track of how many blocks we had walked, alleys we'd checked, dumpsters and mucky ditches we scrapped through and how badly my feet ached so we sat down. There were benches in the middle of the Parkway and it was strangely quite secluded from the noises of the surrounding traffic, pedestrian and vehicular. We got beef sandwiches from Milleys. Hot coffees.

I think you're probably going to have to make some signs. Anthony wiped horseradish sauce from his mustache, also glad to be off his feet.

Yeah… This just sucks!

I was half-asleep when I opened that window.

Don't do this to yourself… Don't do it.

This just sucks, man… Just a few hours after and everything would have been fine. I'm just confused… I'm angry, I'm hurt. I'd love to tell her she's a bitch!… Zoe!!

Okay, now… Easy now, let's hush down, hush it… Dude seriously…tshh, shoo, shoo…

I dug into the beef sandwich, best roast beef in town. And you definitely need the horse radish.

That night, listening to RUSH and doing some charcoal sketches from old photos with friends felt utterly unbound and weightless. I was completely in the flow of the music and color and form of line emerging at the tips of my fingers and all of this movement lost grip of time and space and so was everlasting in that pure white always glorious flash of radiance!

I raced through the ether, electric.

Then the crash. With every thought he received, onto and into himself, his mind stacked sandbags too heavy. One after the next.

The sense of a reality moving forward, of his life without Zoe… Without her completely… It stabbed straight through his chest. Piercing him straight through his heart, he was relieved to be at home bearing it alone and felt the need to let it shake through him and out like a demon thrown from an empty tomb. It was just so stupid! So damned unnecessary!  She's got to turn up somehow.

Final flashes of golden light disperse as leaves release from branches and fall twirling to the grass.

The snow turns to rain on the trees framed at the center of the window.

A golden shawl once above us… he had thought while sitting on the bench… Is now slowly given to the ground.

There is a piano playing tenderly. Sad notes and gentle.

I miss you Zoe. Come home.