On retaining

The drizzle cut through the dense virulent air of grief and disbelief. The taxi pulled over to the side to make way for an ambulance on the narrow road. I looked away to say a silent prayer. The excavator was slowly rolling up the road as I rolled down my windows, globes of rain breaking against my raised ears and clenched jaws. The road paved way to a new apartment complex, taller and more expansive than its neighbours, with amenities that compared the complex to a city, so the hoarding outside gloated ; it had it’s own hospital. That was new. The murky waters of the river below reflected an immaculate environment, or at least the promise of one.

Fifteen feet of concrete, jutting out against the river; to protect, prevent, and prohibit. Brown barely belongs in bourgeois building brochures, boundaries do. Grey is the new brown and green and blue and everything in between. Grey is the mind.

The rain accelerated the river’s drift and moved it along under the bridge and out of my vision. The city’s mission, accomplished. The sirens of the ambulance died down, the car began to move begrudgingly.

How we delude ourselves, displacing anger and retaining anguish. I rolled up the windows as the drizzle turned into a downpour. An act of release that I wanted to emulate.