A Southward Tide

Last night I saw the saddest thing I have ever seen. I saw a homeless man talking to mannequins in the vitrine window of a lingerie store. The boutique was raised above street level and faced an old catholic church. He had walked up the bicycle ramp, leant backwards against the handrail and was holding court with immobile figures in perpetual pose, this hip cocked to one side, that thin forearm twisted outwards, a broken limb extending glued fingers in provocation. The street was empty; the cast of lamplight orange-hued on the brick of the church walls.

The man made small gestures with his hands and mumbled. Occasionally he nodded a half wit smile.

Maybe he was talking to his wife, the woman who left him after his cash ran out and his hallucinations grew fearful. He was telling her of that time she lay naked beside him while he braided a lock of her hair in two long twists. She laughed as she ran her fingers through his handiwork. She was always undoing things, always putting them back to the way they were. Later when he lost his job and his mind began to wander, he blamed her for the unraveling of things, but really all she had were those two strands in her hands, while in his own was his entire life, unwinding slowly.

As I walked past him, these fancies seemed ludicrous. Truth be told, I bet he was a dirty bastard, who just wanted to fuck the painted models upside down, rip off their lacy undergarments like he did to that whore once, back when he had money for whores, back before he went crazy.

I had seen him walking the block before, talking to himself in a stained Members Only jacket, or sleeping face down by the corner deli.  In summertime, he walked barefoot. Now he wore dirty Adidas with the back heel crushed down like a pair of slippers.

Did it matter what he said? His face was streaked with dirt, his clothes stank – the point was that he was talking to mannequins dead behind glass. Off their pert uniform asses hung the price tags of the living – price tags for sex, price tags for cheaters and lovers, for real midnight whispers and real touches, not this cold cupped hand stretched towards him like a horror movie wax figurine.

When I got home to my studio apartment, I imagined him mouthing poems to the windowpane, a flight of autumn leaves floating his words skyward.

I opened a bottle of cheap red wine. It spilled down my throat, filling my stomach like lost phrases.

I cried myself to sleep last night.

(excerpt from short story “The City is a Cage”)