By A FORGOTTEN COLOUR
by
Tomek Dzido
*
I want to repaint my house, but I can’t remember where I live. It’s been a long night and I’m tired. I’m nowhere near my home, wherever that might be, if it even exists. I don’t recall the details, the precision of place lost to me, like everything else, gone. I left my soul on the Great West Road near Chiswick roundabout, along with my shirt and shoes and car. It was 8.15am. Monday morning. Another weekend gone. The week looming. Tarmac tunnels. Roundabouts. Traffic lights. Trains and planes and people. Horns and humans quarrelling. Cranes creaking. Water pipes burst and leaking. Windows down. Engines fuming. Sweat seeping. Knuckles whitening. Seconds ticking. The fly buzzing before my face. Back and forth. Over and over again.
Bzzzzz. Red light. Bzzzzz. Green light.
Bzzzzz. Dashboard.
Bzzzzz. Newspaper.
Bzzzzz…Slam…
Bzzzzz…Slam…
…bz…
…slam…
…slam…
…slam…
…
Green light.
Go.
…
No.
Not this time.
I opened the door and got out. Cars honking. People shouting. Pistons whistling. I stood beneath the gargantuan advertisement board and wondered what it meant. The man smiling. The woman loving. Their life, different. I continued to walk. Into Gunnersbury Park. Northfields avenue. Boston Manor Road. Several back streets. An alley. The canal. I reached the bridge and stared into the filthy water, the twigs and punctured footballs floating in the algae, the fish struggling to breath, the cans of special brew drained and empty, the world beneath dark and undisclosed, a man looking back at me, wondering who I am, where I’ve been, where I’m going.
I’m coming, I whispered.
The sun behind my back.
The water warm.
The colour,
black.
*
The soundtrack for ‘A Forgotten Colour’ is The Audreys ‘Baby, Are You There.’
*
*
