Virus III

When streaks of snow changed into a cold morning rain, a rust coloured cap was pulled over virus eyes. An old grey overcoat was pulled high against fevered skin.

A man who once knew his name lifted himself from the park bench where he had slept. In his sickness he walked unsteadily through drowning leaves.

 

Between the trance and the living

........Between the delirium and the dead 

An infection had swept the land. Had stolen the minds of the young. The incompleteness of memory. Only the sense of what was. The symptom of nothingness. The nothing man.

He stood at the edge of the park and waited till the traffic passed. A cough came to his throat as he walked across the street and wove like time through the wandering men. Among the afflicted he had joined the mutterers: "What is my name? What is my name?" Over and over they said.

 

The man took a pair of dice from his pocket and turned them inside his hands. He stumbled but steadied his feet. He had dropped the Atlantic City dice. They rolled along a puddle and drew snake eyes. He left them behind. The nothing man.

He waited in a sweaty line. Coughing men, waiting for coffee and bread. Waiting for the snakes in rainy stew. Waiting for threaded memories of time.