Earth

A dark cloud forms outside my house. I wait and watch as the rain falls slowly down on my window, drop by drop, trickling down to the ground. I raise the coffee mug to my lips and breathe in the vapor. I take a sip and step towards the window, suddenly something comes over me and I run out into the rain and just stand in the middle of the road. The rain falls slow but relentlessly, every drop sending waves of icy impulses to my bones. I feel afraid to break out against nature, against myself. Something inside battles the resistance, battles for a direction.

I look around. It’s an empty street. There are no people, just cars hiding under their tarpaulin covers. I start to jog through the line of cars and come to a fork in the road. A part of me fears the unlocked door I’ve left behind; another part says it’s had enough. I tilt my head, frustrated at my indecisiveness and run. I just run. I don’t know where I am going, I don’t know what will become of me but all I know is that I am gone. Gone for a day. For two days, for a month. I don’t care. But fear questions my motives. The rain feels colder and colder as the wind begins to rise. A few dogs gaze curiously in my direction. Feeling stupid under their gaze I shamefully lift a leg and pivot around it. And when my back is turned I run off in the direction of the main road. There is a flyover. I run onto it. And then I remember there is no running allowed on flyovers. ‘What a disgrace’, I think, to a freedom fighter that cares about the rules of his prison.

I run anyway. The road is pretty empty. The sky is orange and aflame way off into the horizon but dark and foreboding on top of me. From the top of the flyover I get a good view of the city around me. And I stop running.

I’ve never seen it this way before. The lines, running away in all directions as far as the eye can see. And the tall buildings not letting me see what I should see. There is no option in this mess, you have to walk on the road and you have to kill your sight on concrete.

 Now I feel lost, terribly and hopelessly lost. I sit by the side of the road with my head in my hands and think of my next step. The problem is I realize, I never knew where I was going in the first place. And now I see the city swarmed out like a plague all around me and me, a singular being disconnected from everything there is. I feel like a virus. I ask myself if I am lacking, but I get no answer. I run to the middle of the road and ask the city what it wants from me and it doesn’t reply. Nobody does as they are told. But they do it anyway.

I follow my feet home, looking at the ground all the way. I can’t give up this easily. I am not a building that blocks your view and makes you go around it; I am not a road that forces you to walk on it. I am a stranger, to myself. And I’ve stumbled on a strange land we call the Earth. And nothing makes sense.