When he was younger he would piss in the thick underbrush that lay behind his house. He lived in a compound consisting of five main houses, long and hollow, with drafts hammering through them like beating drums. They never had money for concrete, they never had money for the men of dark colored skin to come from behind the mountains and lay mortar and stone on their grass, so the meadow remained meadow, nature remained somewhat untouched. For him this meant so much, and yet nothing at all, in youth one takes for granted so much and so did he, running in the fields, urinating in the lush grass of his backyard. In youth he was free, because his cheeks were flushed with red and because he use to love to run on chilly autumn days when the grass was soggy with dew. In youth he would run with his cousins behind the house, he would sprint through grass – knee-high, waist-thick – and scrape his young, thin legs against their wet, splintered blades. When he was young he would roll in the grass, he would laugh in the grass and jump in the grass. They would crawl through the grass and they would drag their pointed chins along the dirt and mud of the ground, clumps of brown forming beards on their young hairless flesh. He would drink water from a tiny creek that hid in the grass, that sat like a honey comb and fed sweet goo to the blades of grass. He would lay in the grass and stare at the ever-changing sky. And sometimes, only sometimes, the grass would entwine in his mind, or his callow spirit would overwhelm his body, and his inside, and he would pee on the chartreuse specks and flecks of shrubbery. This was freedom to him, as a boy, this was freedom and this was pleasure, peeing on the thicket behind their house at fall.
He sits and feeds pigeons now. He sits at the fringe of the park, where the green melts off onto the concrete road, and some of the brights sun spills over onto the bench, and the fence and the parked cars. He sits very still for no bone in his body can move properly. He can barely breathe because of a cold that invests his insides, and he hasn't breathed properly for such a long time that he doesn't know whether it is in his head of whether his lungs are shriveling. His body aches. His kneecaps creak, his neck is paralyzed, his mouth no longer quivers in the cold chill of autumn because if it did there would be too much pain. All noises hurt his ears, the cars are thunder, the birds lightings, the wind in the trees the rumble of and earthquake or an air raid. Air raid, there is always and air raid, in his head, in his bones, in his ears, in his lungs, the constant roar of pain, and the constant flight of consciousness. He is dizzy, constantly.
Maybe that is why he felt the need, the urgency, the sheer obligation to himself, to freedom, to urinate on the thick grass behind the park bench. Sometimes the pain became unbearable, sometimes he could no longer stand the roaring and the engines and the noise. He secretes on the thick underbrush that was so lushly like his hometown, and the pain disappears. He is calm. He is at peace. When he stands facing the grass at the fringe of the park, where it's sunlights leaks from the cracks in the park fence, then he is free again, young again. Then nobody can tell him he is mortal, for he is not. For he is now the grass blade, the thick, wet grass blade shivering in the chill of the autumn morning. When he is this grass blades he has no rattling lung and so he breathes in all of the atmosphere, imbibes the sunlight and the sky. When he pees on the grass he is not merely peeing on the grass. He is young again. He is at freedom's peak, climax.
“It's dirty.” She says, she lives close by so her opinion does count, she walks through the park at early morning and sometime she sees him do it, or sometimes she merely smells his excess, but she doesn't like it. “It's dirty.” She says. She tells it to her friends a lot too, they walk through the park and they bark at him, they yell and they toss insults. His mouth still can't move, and even if it could his lungs hurt when he talks, so he does not reply.
“It's just men from the south.” She says with a snort, and her friends laugh, contemptuously, “You know how they are.”
“I don't understand it, it's a park! A park for people, and children that run around here day and night! Think of the germs! Think of the germs!”
She yells loud sometimes. Sometimes she comes over to him, sometimes merely when he is sitting on the bench watching immortality pass him by, she walks over to him and spits in his face. She starts off calmly, saying that she cannot understand how amazingly stupid he is, and disgusting, and ubsurd. But then she begins to shout. She yells louder and louder. Her red face becomes even reader, the thick black pen from her eye pencil looks like a vein under her red, bulging eyes, that puslates and changes from black to blue to purple. She yells so loud she begins to spit at him even though she doesn't mean to. Or at least, she doesn't seem to mean to, he is never sure. She shreiks so loud his ear drums quiver and shake, he wants to yell at her to stop, “It hurts!” He wants to say, “Shut up!” But he doesn't have the lungs to say it. She yells and yells and then she stops, walks away muttering something about the south and those that live there.
But he doesn't really listen. He continues to pee in the park, in the thick grass and the thick shrubbery because if he doesn't it is the end for him. Immortality does not exist, neither does youth and all life has died. He needs the grass, he knows this, it's his lifeline. His bread and water.
So in November twelve he dies. Well, he doesn't, not quiet yet. But on the quiet morning, when the dew clings to the blades of grass like babies, like phlegm, the air is blanketed by mist and the sky is nonexistant, he decides it is a good time for a walk, for a sit down at the bench, for a contemplation of his life. He puts on the necessary clothes, not so warm because clothing himself requires motion that he can not do and in sheer exhaustion and pain he decides he does not want to put on any more clothes. He walks out his door, shuffles a little bit, arrives at the park where the mist is beginning to fade and the sky pierces through it like fish bones. He stops at the park bench. He is in agony, he is in shock. It is not his lungs, no, not this time. It is not his kneecaps, though that has happened once before. It is not his ear drums, that sense is numb. No, at that very moment he is stabbed by the brutal, tormenting pain that comes with the loss of freedom. There, in front of him, right beside the bench on the little hill of lush grass, was a newly built bathroom. It stood heavy, tall and proud on top of the blades, choking and smothering them with it's weight. Despite his broken lungs and his paralyzed mouth, he lets out a shriek.
“That's right.” He hears behind him, and he turns around to see her, her skin old and her back crooked but her eyes still bright and shining with menace. “There, you finally got what you deserve, now you can stop pissing on public property, you dirty rat.”
He doesn't say anything as he shuffles back to his house. The mist is almost gone by the time he opens his door and the sky is in full view, large and thick and ready to engulf him. He looks back at the grass one last time before he closes the door. He feels nostalgic for the shrubbery of home.
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