He stands on the corner of East Bank Way and Fabian Way, in the long winter shadow of Swansea Dockers Sports and Social Club, his tragic, asymmetrical body a cautionary tale of what might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The traffic is slow. It\u2019s the usual blockage: cars, vans, buses and trucks, turning into Quay Parade, ignoring the yellow cross-hatched box that says to new drivers, \u201cDo not enter unless your exit is clear\u201d, but in the hurried world of nine o\u2019clock deadlines, a warning to be ignored, along with the cheery horns of the oncoming traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
He can see the movement of lips behind misted windows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFuck off,\u201d they\u2019re saying. Everyone says that at eight-forty-five on a Monday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pedestrians scuttle by, raising umbrellas as the bright sunshine turns to dripping clouds. They avoid his gaze. They don\u2019t want to know why he\u2019s there, or why he\u2019s smiling the lopsided smile of the obviously disturbed. They don\u2019t want to know why he\u2019s swaying back and forth, back and forth. They don\u2019t listen to his mumbled maledictions. They don\u2019t want to get close enough to smell his rank body, or the fetid, drink-laced breath they know he possesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a moment, he\u2019s back. His smirk widens. He wipes a grizzled hand through his cockatoo hair. Thunder rumbles: a truck\u2019s wave of rainwater washes the smile from his face. Staggering backwards, he curses and reaches for the half-empty can of Superlager hidden in the folds of his dirty and torn jacket. He empties it into his mouth with feverish enthusiasm. It barely makes acquaintance with his throat before it joins the dozen other cans he hasn\u2019t pissed against a wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The empty can slips from his thin, knotted fingers, blue with cold, and red with drink. He looks at his scabbed, wounded hand, raises it to his face to touch the livid red split in his cheek and the swollen lips that once dwelled, lost in a dream, on her warm, soft skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He wants to say her name, but it has disappeared in the tumble-dryer of his head. A pantomime of the unlikely raises its lurid face once again. Could he clean up? Could he win back his place in her affections, his station in life, his dream made real? Finally, he wonders: where is she now? He didn\u2019t know. Too many years. Unbridgeable time, each moment an erected barrier, a game without frontiers in which the prize is his desolation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He closes his eyes and listens to the traffic\u2019s thunder. The rain thickens, the wind begins to tug at his emaciated frame, and his swaying slows to a twitch. He no longer feels the cold. He feels nothing but the sodden clothes clinging to his bones like a funeral shroud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taking a deep breath, a last breath, he takes a hesitant step, then a stride, then another, his eyes still closed. As he steps into the path of an accelerating Porsche SUV, he thinks, \u201cIt was a good life, once\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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