The winter academy

Just another Saturday night in panic town: loneliness stalked the streets, weaving between the drunks. Anxiety danced around like a kingless jester, driving us closer together, further apart, driven like us by the system of hunger. We gorged on each other’s weaknesses. My ugliest face crowded out theirs. Wormfeasts those nights, heaps of wasted time. A wild-haired old woman leered from her attic, scratching the ulcers on her arms muttering: I’ll hang on. I’ll hang on for a long time. All the while wisdom whispered from the other side of passageways we were afraid to enter. (A face appeared in one once and it was like lightning.) Every homeward footprint left a stain. I drew the curtains tight against the dawn, but it was death came in through the window with its air of fate. The spider had fed on its own appetites and woven its web out of its own body. The judge, face to face with himself at last, as usual, sentenced himself to himself in his own court. ‘Here are your flies…’ But later that same day a cleansing storm gathered in livid clouds, and the clouds broke and spilled mercy, and from mercy my heart stole joy like the thief it is. In the precincts of pity the soul was rescued from the violence it had done to itself. Need turned to another Face. Those were the first steps in mercy. Then more clouds came, but thick with unshed snow now, and the snow came down and my ignorance was impeccable in that winter academy, the inner babble muffled by a whiter noise. The sun rose on its great wheel, and I reached a turning: not a fork in the road, but the same road, turning.

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Tags: mercy