No, Lonesome, No Cry

“… I remember when we used to sit
In the government yard in Trenchtown,
Oba - obaserving the 'ypocrites
As they would mingle with the good people we meet…”
Good friends we have, oh, good friends we've lost
Along the way.
In this great future, you can't forget your past;
So dry your tears, I seh…”

The storm has passed, leaving the sidewalks a muddy gray, and he felt something stir sluggishly in the hollow stone of his chest. His heart, the color and density of the concrete. Off to the west, the sky was beginning to clear, patches of azure silk amongst the dirty cotton of the clouds. It’s too bad, he muttered, that the rain doesn’t make clouds look cleaner. He wondered what could really wash it all away. What base to neutralize the acid of sorrow?

“…Good friends we have, oh, good friends we've lost
Along the way.
In this great future, you can't forget your past;
So dry your tears, I seh…”

The blinds were open halfway, thin bars on the soft prison he called his new home. They rattled whenever the door opened. But he just couldn’t bring himself to ask the maintenance guys for some replacement clips. Funny, that sort of routine repair seemed so uninteresting to him now. A small thing to be ignored, like many small things of tiny import. The sun glowed brighter like a flashlight wrapped in tissue paper. The watery rays gave a pearly sheen to his face and the walls that bounded it. His eyes closed slowly, a sleepy jaguar twitching its ears at the noise buzzing from the radio. Bob Marley unknowingly drives needles into an aching heart.

“...And then Georgie would make the fire lights,
As it was logwood burnin' through the nights.
Then we would cook cornmeal porridge,
Of which I'll share with you;
My feet is my only carriage,
So I've got to push on through…”

Either the world heaved under his feet, or he grew faint, sagging against the door. There was a sharp crack, as the glass in his hand hit the trim along the frame. The dull report sounding as a gunshot in a living room suddenly become anechoic. The walls, the carpet, swallowing up the rasp of his breath and the beats of his heart. He wondered why those noises disappeared, yet he could hear every dog barking, plane flying and bad muffler out in the parking lot. Ah, he thought, it’s all internal.

“…But while I'm gone, I mean:
Everything's gonna be all right!
Everything's gonna be all right!
Everything's gonna be all right!
Everything's gonna be all right!...”

Anything self-generated, he said softly, is bound to disappear. The tree in the forest with no one around. Not even myself to hear it. The glass grew heavy, dragging his arm down as if he were holding a cold, wet cannonball. His thirst increased as wetness gathered at the corners of his eyes. He smiled at the thought that maybe he did not have to raise the glass after all. The cold liquid travelling by stealth through the capillaries of his hand and arm. On the way, something alchemical occurred. The drops from the glass no longer ice-cold and bracing, they emerged hot and molten. Liquid salt slag from the furnace of his heart rolled down his fevered cheeks. The glass he raised to his lips and took a swallow, oddly dainty in his motions. A marriage of quinine and lime coated his mouth and lips with sublime bitterness.

He laughed again, at the thought of tonic. A good thing, he told himself, I need to protect myself from the fever. The grin faded, knowing the fever, this emotional malaria he carried within, would return. The radio droned on, and he found he had no strength to turn it off. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, staring out the window into the silvery bowl of the sky.

“…I said, everything's gonna be all right-a!
Everything's gonna be all right!
Everything's gonna be all right, now!
Everything's gonna be all right!...”

He said to no one, I know you mean well, Bob, but…gimme some time to believe you.

Lyrics from “No, Woman, No Cry” by Bob Marley