In the style of Marquez, a dedication to my very close and ailing friend.
Sometime after the war, he made out to watch the moon.
First week upon arrival, uniform still on, he came out onto the rooftop of his building. The rooftop was black and empty, the view of the city scarred only by the black antennas around him. Twilight had already set in, and the silver disk of the moon hung just over the horizon of antennas.
He set out then, once and for all, to never take his eyes off the moon.
He lay down, keeping his eyes fixed on it so that he may be able to see it move gradually and not in random ticks of directed glances during the day and night. He lay down, watching the white moon pass over him during the night, following its path as it continued to pass over and under the building as an eternal jump rope, never missing a day, even when it would rain, glowing through the gray overcast like a radioactive copper plate.
Autumn began to approach and his friends, who often watched the moon with him, began to worry that he would not survive the winter. But he would hear nothing about it, and his friends, weary of his abstinence, descended within the building.
The winter passed, and he continued to watch the moon. Hardened by the sun and the city air, his body grew hard and emancipated, washed only by the autumn leaves that came to pass over the roof. Years passed and his body became flatter and flatter, seeping gradually into the thick tar of the roof. Friends no longer came up and relatives visited at increasingly longer intervals, and then no longer visited at all, giving in to the silence of his withering, and ultimately to the silence of their own deaths.
Before her death, however, his mother came to the roof. It was the windiest night in the history of the building and the winds awoke her. They rattled the windows and ripped the dreams of those asleep out of them. Caught in the drafts, the dreams began to mix and intersect, so that soon nobody was sure if their dream was indeed theirs.
The gusts swept into the apartment and out and back within. They passed under the building and above it, sprinkling their remnants over the rooftop. Vigilant, his mother would not let go of her dream. So she held and held, and soon she too was dropped over the rooftop. And so there she sat, watching her son, ignoring the siren of her own death that was rising from the street.
She covered his body with her dream so as to save him from the coming gusts. She sat with him for a short while and went downstairs. Alone, he lay in the tar. He was cold, and feeling his chill the dream began to creep over him.
In it he still lived in his old room, beneath the room of his mother. It was night, and he was leaning out of his window. The moon was out, and his eyes were fixed upon it. Sensing his glance, his mother leaned out of her window, watching him below. But he never saw her. She watched him and he watched the moon, and seeing his eyes fixed on the white gleam she would slowly form small tears, and they would roll down and fall, one by one, until a small drizzle would descend upon him. But he did not feel it. He watched the moon and she watched him and a rainstorm of a thousand tears would wash his face and his hair and he would do nothing about it, never knowing where it came from.
The dream crept over his body, covering him to his neck, tucking him in. There was no one to bother him now, save for the company of the aged dreams resting along his side. Two thin screens of salt formed over his eyes. He suddenly wanted desperately to blink, so as to clear them, but his eyelids could no longer close, not even for a moment.
And so he lay on the roof under the sky, the moon fixed in the film of his eyes.
And so he lies on the roof under the sky.
I just hope I could visit him.
