Light is rolling off the city in a gentle spring wave. A tide retreating after flooding the paths and streets, walls and faces. Winter’s breath is still threaded through the fume filled air. Audible is the grumble of a hundred tired engines, followed by the too-long beeps of somebody’s impatience. Deceptive evening colors cast shadows shaped like men and women against dust ridden walls. thud  thud  thud. The city’s afternoon heartbeat slows in time with the honey coloured sky, ready to pick up again as soon as honey becomes black and stretched shadows twist into the uneasy rhythm of the night. 

Friday is yawning, reaching for sleep. The next wave of the night is rolling in, a desperately black sky dusted with glancing light. High tide again. Restlessly hanging branches begin to quiver, taking what they can from the now unsaturated air. Spring puts on winter’s costume; dusty moonlight lands in barcode strikes across strict glass. Easing onto the pavement is the familiar sound of unsympathetic rain. And with the water, gone now are the stars that had been a hot shower on the night’s cold body. Sharp whispers of wind scratch around the curves and corners. They claw at the fabric moving swiftly down the street. They ache through the stride of a nervous walk home. Nervous because in the city’s simmering midnight performance, prejudice crawls from the glazed over cracks and the freshly painted posters. Vivid. Nighttime neon letters invite strangers into their hollow embrace; where bodies move as one to the beat of a shuddering baseline. Denim presses against silk, velvet and stretched cotton. They’ll drink, they’ll lie, they’ll touch. They’ll even decide what happens to each other in the ignorant secrecy of blackened alleyways. Places where no doesn’t matter. The confused word ‘love’ is twisted in knots here in the prowling shadows of brick and cement. A body bathed in yellow street light is to blame instead, for this confusion, rejected by the snaking lit up letters and shivering cobblestones. 

Listen. These walls echo kisses and kicks. Pastel red bricks remember the touch and warm copper signposts memorised the sound. It was soft. Like the grains of dust that float gently in sunlight. Here, in the bloodstream of the city, a heart beat fast and a careful breath was exchanged. Here is where lips met lips, hands met hands, skin met skin. Tender. Here is where delicate cheeks felt a fingertip touch. Innocent. Their secrets dancing, hand-in-hand along a stark and rigid skyline. Until suddenly, they couldn’t. Violently red letters cried STOP. Through the thick black air, merciless eyes darted. They saw what the brick remembers and the copper memorised. The stench of burning red alcohol escaped a grimace dripping with contempt. Immediately, the stifling alleyway’s walls strained to touch, screaming white noise back and forth at each other. Blinding. Tossing. Ricocheting. Ragged knuckle and innocent skin crashed. Once. Twice. Again and again. Here is where red spattered the pavement, where it burst through every grotesque crack. 

Look. Prickling lamp posts and haggard trees. He doesn’t see them. His eyes are shut. His body collapsed. Knives of incessant wind scratch drawings on the back of a boy who did nothing wrong. With each marred connection of fist to smile line, of boot to crumpled paper chest, with every force-fed flash between light and shadow and back again, the beaten figure had succumbed to the ground’s ice cold clutches. Alone again. It is a cacophony of quiet, silencing the sighs of a sleeping city. They say it is a grotesque love. They say it is a sickness. Dirty air swallows him and spits him back up again. Feeble, the splintering wooden sign post of an unwanted storefront stands taller than he does. Curious silver light blinks, peering through piteous clouds. A sorrow-filled moon stares down at the devastation. A crescent waits to become full again. 

And soon you will open your eyes. Your battered body will be encouraged to straighten. For seconds, minutes or maybe for hours, you will stand. And you will wait. For what, you won’t know. You’ll listen again to the sweet poems that shattered in this stick-figure alleyway, carved deep into your senses. Still, you can feel every touch on your skin. Ravaged. Loved. Thrashed and bruised. With one numb finger tip, you’ll remove the sodden dirt from underneath your nails and in the twenty-four-year-old creases of your palm. You are still breathing. You will remember that you can’t change, not even if you tried. You are a boy who kissed another boy.