Abstract of Emotion

– There needn’t have been a deluge, the rain cascading against the anterior walls with a soft thud like crimson colliding against tissue. The scent of childhood innocence didn’t have to evaporate into the humidity that filled the night, but it did and there was. In the sleek darkness of night, against the stark reflections of life in the glistening of settled rain, Macauley could hear the rhythmic beating of his heart; the ricochet of its echo, from chamber to chamber, causing a reverberation in his breath, and along his arterial walls. The quickening pulse; a pulsation which undermined his concentration and blurred his focus, sending all philosophies collapsing, in a separate cascade all their own. In his breath he searched for the remnants innocence. For what is always there, long after childhood and its innocence have been weakened and succumbed to humidity. And there was humidity; his breath, the cascade, the downpour against his naked nerves. His heart would’ve had it every other way. It felt it, and Macauley shook with the awareness. He cringed at such knowledge, at the guests to which he had opened himself and which had thereafter invaded. Undeterred by the rain, by night; they were the rain, the cascade, the deluge, the inundation. The syncopate rhythm of their invading falling into the cadence of his heart, increasing the tempo, as the waters of the rain gathering along the darkened pavement lost themselves in the displacement of searching, flooding, and obscuring clarity. His breath followed them, or attempted to, as each inhalation became quickened and sharper, shorter, preparing for a sprint. The neurons inside their tight spaces in the passages of his mind mimicked the motion of the invaders, of the displaced water reflecting life. He felt an infantile nature sweep through the alleys with the shudder of fear he had known in the darkness of his crib. He cringed and she saw it, but he did not notice that she did. He could hear the winds pick up, the howling of solitude, and the invaders continuing to cascade, collide, and inundate his city. He would have held the cringe a little longer, had he realized she had noted it. But under the impression that it had never occurred, except in his awareness of it, he rid himself of it and steadied himself against any further deterioration, possible deterioration, in her awareness of him. He could hear the echoing of a voice deep within the darkness and the serpentine paths of the sleeked streets. He could feel its melancholy hope, a familiar wail. He felt overcome, his city under siege. He looked at her and conceded a smile. She too offered her own recompense. Their faces inches from each other, as they had been, as the sun humbled itself toward the horizon and the shadows about them softened. The inches between them dissolved and their lips prayed together in a form of communion. He felt the pang, the echo, the wail, the melancholy hope, and that he could, he would have brought them closer together. But bodies and cities obstruct such possibility.