Fiction: "Cry to the World"

Jean Paul Lemieux, "Young Man"

I have a found a new pleasure of walking out of doors onto a balcony and peering into the treeline and the skies. 

There's a taste for it, to be sure – standing alone, leaning on a 2x4 rail painted white, identical to those above, right, below, left. But what I see is the world preparing just outside a wall, and in secret and by degrees it seethes in past all boundaries, nearly benign, but really with the sad love of inevitability.

Once I came out upon such a balcony in such a mood and leaned over the rail – my ribcage hooked over uncomfortably, my arms folded – and it happened that I heard the sound – at such an hour on a Saturday – of a door calmly opened and closed, the cheap blinds clacking upon the glass below.

A young man not a year older or younger did as I do, and, unnaturally as I, lit a cigarette held in fingers poised as he might imagine one well-practiced in the art might do. But I knew he was sincere. I know he was sincere at least in trying. He carried on the act in company with himself and at last sat down and sighed.

I thought at once we should sit inside by a lamp burning all night long and talk of things only we should talk of, a special blessing of particularity shared between us. He must have heard me shuffling because he was at his rail again, staring unforgivingly upward. And our eyes met, and because they fixed upon the real and demanding continuity between us, I saw in those eyes vitriol, and I knew he would never pardon me for breaking into a world I thought my own.

I have since awakened from that dream and hope no more for a friend.



Written by Ross J. McKnight
Edited by Christopher Hamilton