His eyes, concurrent with his heartbeat, were fluttering shut. He felt as if he was falling in and out of consciousness, with every consecutive breath. The stone ledge probably wasn’t the first place he would choose to respite, but that apparently wasn’t up to him. His body wanted rest, scratch that, it needed rest. It was telling him so with every ache and fleeting thought he wished would go away. So the stone ledge seemed like a fine resting place, he concluded. He sort of wished he wasn’t outside, the chill pinched at his cheeks and the unforgiving breeze rapped his ankles. However, the sun was peeking through the clouds and it felt good. He liked to think that the individual rays specifically picked him to land upon, it was comforting to think about it that way, but pathetic he knew. He gave in and closed his tired eyes and listened for a while; he heard the crying children, too young to be allowed to wander about but too old to be stuck in a stroller. The man felt like he could relate to the screaming child, he was stuck in life and knew he shouldn’t be there, but didn’t have the capacity to be on his own. To run away. He continued to listen; he heard the young couple bickering, which was annoying. He wished they would stop–
“All you do is text her all day! I see it on your phone!”
“Babe, you’ve got it all wrong. She’s just a friend from work! When did you get so jealous?”
Their quarreling was just white noise, but it couldn’t drown out his personal thoughts. He wondered if this would be the last stop on his journey. His final resting place. It’s very public, he reflected, and he thought that maybe a police officer would confuse him with a homeless man, or a lost tourist. The man didn’t want any police officers to be confused, he knew exactly what he was doing and he wished that he would never be awoken from his hopeful eternal slumber.
