The Long Walk
Daniel Yetman July 26, 2011
The sun sits as it should, full and bright in the sky uncontested by the clouds. I can feel it heating up my skin infusing me with its energy. There’s a squirrel to my right, small, brown and with a peanut in its hands. I veer slightly off my path to see if he moves in my presence—he does. There are voices from tourists all around, they hold cameras in their hands and chatter in a language that means nothing to me. I am as foreign as them in this land yet I have grown comfortable with my surroundings in the past three days. Still though, it’s a long walk.
I kick a vicarious white pebble against the asphalt; it seems to stick out against its surroundings. There are buildings off in the distance that seem like skyscrapers from here but in reality are only ten floors high. My heart begins to pound hard as the blood being pumped through my veins seems to thin. I suddenly become very light headed but I cannot tell if it’s from excitement or dehydration. I make a fist only to find I can’t clench it tight, it hangs loosely by my side. I look to her and see her looking down, her eyes fixated at her feet or the ground. I can’t see her eyes but if I could they would sparkle against the sunlight. I open my mouth ready to speak but before a single word comes out I close my mouth again and scratch the back of my head. She twitches as if she thought I was going to say something. With each step I take my heart begins to pace, against the clock I race against myself.
A bird flies by but I don’t have time to break my focus, he swoops low against the ground almost taking off a few heads. Its presence seems to be a distraction for everyone as they point and gawk at it.
“Zenaida macroura, a beautiful specimen but not something out the ordinary.” I think to myself.
We walk across a long parking lot that lacks a single car, there are wooden stakes sticking out of the ground periodically with electrical outputs. I can’t imagine what they are for but I don’t expend too much thought. The sun goes behind a cloud slowly, creating a long shadow across the parking lot that chases us slowly. It brings with it instant coolness—it’s still nowhere near cold but not as comfortable as it was before. I remove my sunglasses from my eyes and place them on my forehead. I run my fingers through my hair and straighten my shirt in an attempt to look more presentable. My pulse still seems to be erratic and my blood pressure is still rising, physiologically it is something I haven’t felt in quite some time. Mixed with feelings of faintness and nervousness it is becoming progressively clearer what I am feeling.
I seem to be caught in one of those instances that I wish could last forever. Here in the moment, I’m already thinking about how special this instance of time will become when I look back or dream about it when I’m old and gone. But for now each footstep personifies my emotion and I feel like screaming—I have been here before in this same moment, it’s a different city but everything else is the same. There is no possible way to fight against time, make it last forever, I can slow it down, make it last a few extra seconds but within the half hour I’m going to be sitting in a bedroom so far from home thinking back at what I should have said—travelling through all the hypotheticals that I’m deluded enough to believe.
And here she stands feet away but I continue to bite my tongue, each footstep drifting farther away. And my head is pounding I can feel my superficial temporal artery pulsating in a rhythmic fashion—she looks so calm and collected, as I do I would imagine—on the outside I look almost bored, but just below the surface I’m bubbling.
I close my eyes tight for a fraction of a second; I feel the neurons in my brain firing but come up with no master plan. Instead I walk faster, slightly ahead of her—enough to gain about three meters in about twenty strides. From my new vantage point I hold the distance and pretend to stare at some interesting feature on the building to our right. My pace slows again until she catches up again. When she is about fifty centimeters behind I half turn and point out what I was looking at. She laughs automatically—politely and then I ask her the first question that comes to my head. As far as questions go it’s not special, in most situations it probably wouldn’t lead to anything other than a simple response. To my good fortune she seems to have plenty to say and with little input of my own I am able to coast through the conversation.
I breathe calmly while speaking to her but each word captures my heart. My thoughts contradict my tongue as I hold back what I’m thinking. The sun shines brightly as I nod along and interject blank statements into her story. I feel like my eyes are sparkling but I don’t think it is noticeable.
I smile when I look back, where I see the rest of our group twenty feet back. My heart bounces in my chest as I realize that we are both in the same moment. I can only imagine what she thinks of me—I assume I don’t cross her mind at all—but it also seems like at this moment her thoughts drift towards me. Maybe I’m just a plastic figurine, a blank slate to bounce ideas off—my personality feels flat and nervousness feeds my inhibition. Her voice seems to be a distraction too, it rises and falls like the melody of a Baltimore oriole.
Tic, tic, tic, tic… The clock counts down the seconds until acquaintances part and life returns to normal. I wish I could resist but it is a fight I—nobody—can win.
It doesn’t take long for me to run out of words and before I have time to fully enjoy the moment she seems to be gone again, back into the crowd, leaving me alone. We are so close to our destination I can see it rearing higher with each footstep. And as we step upon the doorstep I imagine shouting at the top of my lungs, “Stop!” And dictating instructions of how we don’t have to take this—we can fight against time’s corruption. But he has an endless army and we stand being eaten alive but his grunt work—on our skin and in our guts, eating us inside out.
We filter into a building that seems only half built but still high above everything around it. The inside smells like sterilizer and saw dust; as she walks by me I steal peripheral glances, feeling smug knowing that only moments ago I was speaking to a girl so beautiful.
A man steps off the elevator looking like he stepped off a time machine—he wears an all black suit with a top hat and a cane, he is the human embedment of Mr. Peanut.
We step on after him, crowding together and ignoring the maximum weight capacity sign. I start to think of how terrible and inconvenient it would be to get stuck here on an evening like this. She stands in front of me, I want to say something but given the close quarters the conversation would be anything but private, as soon as one of us said something interesting somebody else would jump in and annex the conversation.
Eventually we reach the top floor and step off one by one; she gets off before I do. I swallow hard and take a leap of faith; I place my right hand on her shoulder and pull her aside as everyone walks by. She’s caught off-guard at first but she quickly realizes what is going on. I look down at the floor and back up into her eyes to be met with two crystals that seem to say, “I just want to be friends.” She doesn’t look intimidated however, she seems collected as if she has been here before—I know I’ve been here before. I open my mouth and panic when no words exit my mouth. I feel like she is communicating with me telepathically telling me not to say what is curling on my tongue. She looks so beautiful I chicken out.
“Never mind.” I say after what feels like an eternity.
She smiles and walks down the hallway—I half expect her to turn around and get in the last word but she never does. I watch her walk until she takes a turn and disappears beyond closed doors. Little did I know that by the next morning she would walk out of my life forever.
All rights belong to the original author, as defined under the Canadian Copyright Law.
DannYetman
www.yetmanpoetry.blogspot.com
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