Hanging In A Jar

My lockdown apartment faced no neighbours. Opposite me was a former monastery, dark and unused, the gates bolted shut.  Most days I lay on the kitchen table with my feet poking out of the window, watched only by the sun. ⠀ As time went on, I grew accustomed to the distant clatter of neighbours' cutlery against their dinner bowls, of the dog walkers surreptitiously meeting on the street below my window, of the scratching beaks of the tiny birds poking through the seeds that lay in the gutters. But my constant companions were the trees of the monastery. The trees were the beacons that brought in life. They were maypoles for the bats that spiralled round in the dusk, impervious to my desperate lens, playfully looping in a manner I couldn't quite fathom. The heat brought lightning, illuminating the sky and rendering them actors on a grand stage: a performance just for me! These trees were companions to the life that flourished from their gifts, unnoticed before, but always there. I...

Many years ago, in Napoli, I caused a traffic accident. My head was in the clouds - daydreaming about an antique silverfish with an emerald eye - when I stepped out onto a one way road. But it wasn't one way. The motorcyclist braked. His body lurched forward and scraped along the asphalt in slow motion as I stood, rooted to the spot, watching him die. Everything else stopped, but the screams of the drivers behind me. And then somehow, he arose. He trembled as he looked at the palms of his hands. They were embedded with grit, but no blood. In the end, he comforted me, I don't know why, and I still feel such guilt for killing a man, even if he didn't die. I always wanted to live in Napoli, and maybe one day I will. But for now, I'm here. I feel so at ease in this city. At night the bricks are soft to the touch, but I daren't. And there are no roads. Today, I bought a tiny, antique, silver fish. ⠀