Poikilosophy
Milliseconds from my cheek Jack's clubbed fist stops, halts as though pulled taut on a wire, I feel the cool breeze of movement stop. Yet no pain--one eye opens, then another. His gaze, his eyes locked like a guided missile of fury, begins to waver, to tremble, to silt down into lonesome apology. His hand drifts in slow motion down to his side, to open and clench and wriggle, ashamed, into the pocket of his jeans. The green of his eyes wobbles like lime jell-o, the closest to tears he ever comes.
"Sash--" Jack croaks, soft, barest of words. Not a mumble but more a cry, if one can sob in a whisper.
I look at the floor. At the tossed and crumpled leaves beneath my feet, at the snow creeping inside the door to the roof like an ocean frozen lapping at the sand. He used to apologize, when he came just-so-close to striking me. He used to make that godawful sound of pain and grief, a sawed- off, snub-nosed bleat of agony. It was before, though, before when things were just a little better and he was just a little saner, maybe just a little bit more human.
Oh my friend. Oh, Jack.
His eyes have gone hollow again, and I know what he sees now, a face caught in the moment of fear and knowing death, child's tears.
What do I say? What could I have ever said to Jack, what balm could soothe the mind born the wrong way, born blasted out and fucked up, miswired just enough that he could never be... Something. Someone.
My brilliant friend, smart as hell but no, he tells me. Never to be a leader, never to be a hero. He's smart enough to see the sickness inside him, smarter still enough to name it, but as always never good enough to quell the quaking dragons of his heart. His rage, burned from potent fuel of pain, surges and scalds and wounds those who love or hate, it's not picky, it doesn't care. But he does. And he hurts more and so, I see it in him, see the burning and the pain more than just the physical, the crack of bony knuckles on the wall or the way it sounds to hear someone map their life on their skin with a knife.
Watching him, at night, sound asleep with all the rest of us rats, us worthless vagrants, watching him sit alone and apart by the window and watch the moon and the silver of the blade, but I can't see the blood and I'm glad. The tears pool in my eyes at his hopeless exile, and if it were anyone else I could just... Say something. Maybe tell him, it's okay. Maybe just hug him.
But I can't. Not my Jack, my poor bewildered friend. For Jack touch is loss and pain and he just can't seem to take it, take the horror that someone could be his friend, care for him, or love him.
Something secret in me wishes I didn't love him. But he's my friend and even if I didn't see his sweaty, tangled hair, his zits and his scars through rose-tinted glasses I'd still love him anyway. He's got a way, he does. Not sure what kind, exactly.
"Jack."
Poor lost boy. Not the only one I love, no, but best of them, faults and all.
"Yeah, man?" Humbled.
"You're--"
"An idiot?" And he sort of jerks his mouth in half a smile.
"No," I grin and have to laugh, because being with him makes me want to. "Just Jack."
"Just Jack?"
"Hey," I tell him, with the lightest sock to the shoulder because how else do I touch him? "That's more than me, man."
And he does smile then, that soft smile that, if you photographed it, would look just as normal as anyone else, just as happy and safe. "I guess so."
We walk then, argument forgotten, or at least ignored, down the empty hallways where once upon a time Jack might have been locked up, these secret hallways that no one remembers. Or perhaps, like all our arguments before, just ignored and made forgotten in the quest to heal.
We don't talk, because we don't need to. He makes a noise and stops me, and picks up a little sparrow dead from cold. He strokes its chest, its beak, its cold curled clawed feet. His eyes go soft and gentle, soft like polarfleece and the warmth of a fire in midwinter. The cold melts. Eases. It's a January thaw, one that never lasts.
If I could just love him enough.