London/Pt.4

I should tattoo the city to mark its temporary arrest on compounding years of sadness. This is the indecision of the day, where I battle myself and submit to a coinflip. Heads and tails, I can commit to chance, I cannot commit to the unknown. I marched into The Circle like a rite of passage pending, spoke my name and asked for a memory drawn into my belly in the form of a vase.

Staring up from the table I’m remembering a beautiful face of freckles in a Soho coffee shop, where eye contact became a mournful medium for art and longing. Wordless, I hoped the smile I drilled down as I walked out became a mark on her iris in the way this stoic city has shadowed mine, bright and velvety, as I let life drift me toward a thirsty lust to fuck it until only one of us is left standing with a transient stamp that causes a reptilian flinch at recall.

Days end. Trips end. Early, but not prematurely. Walking 24 miles in two days like a street ghost looking for a little light in the tunnel and the possibility of starting something good in the face of an untimely ending. There is a point where one city blends into every other city. The pub signs (another color, another animal), the ornate architecture, and the belief that age is equal to wisdom rut the long face of London like blitzkrieg scars of a stern grandfather.