Stormy Weather
The blues walked in and met me
There's a dark shadow under his eyes, reminiscent of the bottom of an ashtray or the filter of the cigarette he has hanging from his thin, bloodless lips. It reminds you of your dad when he came home from a nine to five shift and took off his office-standard tie and unbuttoned his blue, creased shirt and made a cup of coffee with three sugars and no milk and stared at the kitchen floor till he could remember there was more to life than filing cabinets and figures on a screen.
Except Harry doesn't offer you an exclamation like your dad used to, doesn't say that Jack was being a pain in the office and that his boss had set the deadline impossibly close. Harry just stopped to flick out a silver lighter, a gift from a 3am stop at the old deserted barber shop on Freemont Street, a mocking parody of the real street littered with the corpses of buildings, and Harry lit his stupidly expensive cigarette he stole from his aunt and he doesn't ask you if you wanted a drag.
You didn't.
He falls into step with you, long legs and proper shoes, and you wonder when he started wearing those stupid black coats like your dad's betters did. The official, business ones with the leather briefcases and suitably fancy watches - an indicator of status - strapped to the wrist of their agile, paper-grabbing hands.
"It's going to rain tomorrow," he says quietly, almost to himself, flicking his hair back from his head, the only youthful thing about him, and you can picture him striding away down a business street holding tight to a uniform black umbrella and ducking into the shelter of a shops overhand, dutifully ignoring any others who join him and offering the time to an appropriately dressed woman with a tight bun.
You don't offer a reply but hum in affirmation, not even glancing at the sky. He doesn't hear you. You don't trust the weather station as far as you can throw it, predicting sun on your tenth birthday and rewarding you with a storm and a wrecked, muddy dress instead. Your mother made that dress from a material you picked out on a cloudy sunday, and she said it brought out your eyes, but you were ten and didn't really care and she's dead now and the weather is never going to matter that much again.
It's going to rain tomorrow, and it won't impact your life terribly. You live from building to building and under layers over layers of coats and you don't know why anyone even cares anymore.
He drops his stupidly expensive cigarette to the floor, and when you look back there's a little boy trying to pick it up, an aghast mother pulling him away. There's still half left, and you see the man crouched on the floor at the doorway to an empty shop eyeing it up. It's probably warmer than he's been in years. You don't think about the space heater you left on at home two years ago.
When you reach the school gates, Harry walks up to a girl with a bun and red lipstick, and there's dark clouds in the sky, foreboding and advancing, and you stand at the gates of a school you never got the chance to attend and wonder why everyone grew up so fast without you.
Except Harry doesn't offer you an exclamation like your dad used to, doesn't say that Jack was being a pain in the office and that his boss had set the deadline impossibly close. Harry just stopped to flick out a silver lighter, a gift from a 3am stop at the old deserted barber shop on Freemont Street, a mocking parody of the real street littered with the corpses of buildings, and Harry lit his stupidly expensive cigarette he stole from his aunt and he doesn't ask you if you wanted a drag.
You didn't.
He falls into step with you, long legs and proper shoes, and you wonder when he started wearing those stupid black coats like your dad's betters did. The official, business ones with the leather briefcases and suitably fancy watches - an indicator of status - strapped to the wrist of their agile, paper-grabbing hands.
"It's going to rain tomorrow," he says quietly, almost to himself, flicking his hair back from his head, the only youthful thing about him, and you can picture him striding away down a business street holding tight to a uniform black umbrella and ducking into the shelter of a shops overhand, dutifully ignoring any others who join him and offering the time to an appropriately dressed woman with a tight bun.
You don't offer a reply but hum in affirmation, not even glancing at the sky. He doesn't hear you. You don't trust the weather station as far as you can throw it, predicting sun on your tenth birthday and rewarding you with a storm and a wrecked, muddy dress instead. Your mother made that dress from a material you picked out on a cloudy sunday, and she said it brought out your eyes, but you were ten and didn't really care and she's dead now and the weather is never going to matter that much again.
It's going to rain tomorrow, and it won't impact your life terribly. You live from building to building and under layers over layers of coats and you don't know why anyone even cares anymore.
He drops his stupidly expensive cigarette to the floor, and when you look back there's a little boy trying to pick it up, an aghast mother pulling him away. There's still half left, and you see the man crouched on the floor at the doorway to an empty shop eyeing it up. It's probably warmer than he's been in years. You don't think about the space heater you left on at home two years ago.
When you reach the school gates, Harry walks up to a girl with a bun and red lipstick, and there's dark clouds in the sky, foreboding and advancing, and you stand at the gates of a school you never got the chance to attend and wonder why everyone grew up so fast without you.
♠ ♠ ♠
I wrote this as if the narrator was dead, but interpret how you will