people in the dark

Over the summer, and because of a series of miscommunications for which I do not blame myself but am likely guilty, I spent over two weeks in the south of France, alone in an apartment without air conditioning, with a part-time writing internship and a strong desire to deeply know the place in which I was staying. 

wind isn’t whistling or rustling; moving through quiet treetops, awakening sound

I went out onto the chalky streets of Avignon every day. Walked along avenues to the park, settled atop a long flight of stairs, that overlooked the river, slicing blue and wide; to the Palais des Papes (in the garden of which, at closing time, I was somehow overlooked by employees and subsequently locked in —I had to jump down from a high wall to escape a night of sleeping on a bench of warm stone, and in my leap, terrified a walker); but the greatest part of the stay was the streets I frequently found myself on: crooked, cobblestones uneven. Aglow at night.

pine needles (deep, silent green) and cigarette butts in fine gravel

Once, whispers of music floating drew me into a public square (clouds of white coating my sandaled feet). A jazz festival outside my high window. Blue glow, a mass of people gently swaying, rhythm moving through strangers’ bodies like a common pulse. Beating. A shared heart.

kick up white dust, cloud surrounds stampede

Nights pulsed most. People trickling out of their homes, meeting in crooked squares. (Trees, shadowed green leaves jagged and numerous where they hang next to tiled roofs; patches of quick-fading sky irregular between leafy clumps.) Dim laughing voices that float over courtyard walls. Tables, filled with people, lining the front of every restaurant. Neon signs radiate pink. (Silhouetted vines cling to black-stained walls.)

every grain of sand and wood screaming to make its presence known

A tan wall. Stones, pockmarked gray and beige, piled uneven. Small shadows where they jut out. An arch in the wall’s middle cut off by something like a chimney, edged with flaky charcoal. Fractured. Black line meandering down middle. Bars over window (sheets of dust) framed in concrete. Spanish tiles at the building’s top. Curving. Sun’s last patches spotting the roof in late afternoon white-yellow. Deeper colors, brown-yellow and terra cotta, stand out against the tan. 

dull against the sky, brown at the very edges, melting into white, melting into ever-intensifying blue

Streets flood with the people in the dark. Noses and eyes beacons of shadow, hair cascading puddles of black. Their features stark beneath bright streetlights, empty in the winding alleys racked with night. The people in the dark murmur in large clumps. Single words, sharp, jump at you. (Collapse of context.)

when the sacred becomes nothing but a small piece of the mundane

And the people in the dark are only on the streets, transitional spaces, for as long as they need to be. Obsessed with direction. Crooked alleys, tree-lined roads, soft, reflective spaces only conduits for perpetual motion. Society, at all times, going. 

people jog on the shady path behind me, eyes on the ground, ponytails sagging to the floor, as if the glory isn’t worth even stopping for. look, look up! be.