Apathy
There is a man on the sidewalk. He is dirty, disheveled. A putrid stench rises from his tattered clothing. His nose is red from the cold, his eyebrows and ragged hair frosted. He stares at me expectantly, a madness behind the shadow in his eyes.
Down the street there’s the screech of burning tires, tinkling of shattered glass hitting the pavement, the crunching sound made by metal on metal. It’s impossible to tell if the scream is human.
A dark alleyway, there are muffled curses. The sound of a body hitting the pavement, fabric tearing, a woman crying, heavy breathing, bounces off the walls. So does the pleading.
Up on the thirteenth floor, the rapid firing of a machine gun overcomes the music blaring across the street. Pandemonium; the window breaks, the shards rain down, like the blood. They’re scattered across the road like diamonds.
In the adjacent building, a woman smokes her last cigarette as she stares into the mirror. She doesn’t know that her best friend on the other side of the world is in the same room, hanging from the ceiling.
Five streets down, a boy misses his bus. He didn’t have the energy to run because his insides are writhing. He is hungry, but he has a home.
At school, the thud of bone connecting with bone carries from the parking lot. It only accompanies the crowd, thirsty for blood. The beads from the rainbow bracelet skitter across in the snow.
Three houses down from the school, a woman is on her knees. Her ears are ringing, her head is throbbing. Blood trickles into her mouth and down her chin. Her knees are weak, her body bruised. Her husband is now busy reading the newspaper.
Forty minutes away, in the city, golden lies of nothing are whispered into ears that hear them all the time. But she cannot hear them; she can only feel the pounding, smell the sweat and close her eyes.
Twenty four blocks away is a hospital filled with the sick and dead and the living who mourn them. The doctor walks to the waiting room, wondering what she should say to the little girl’s family.
A room directly above them, a woman retches, her fingers as white as the porcelain sink she’s gripping. She doesn’t want to look into the mirror so she closes her eyes and feels the cancer eating away at her body.
Her sister is a million miles away, underwater, her lungs burning with pain as she holds her breath. She is swept beneath by the tides and churning water and she cannot resurface. The water, her neighbor, is now slamming through the city and destroying her home.
High up in space, it is a vacuum. No one can hear their screams. There is no sound as the fire crackles and burns through the metal and their skin.
On the other side of the globe, an earthquake shatters the ground on which they stand. The world they know collapses around them and there’s nothing left but smoke, rubble and the broken bodies of millions.
I see these things. Hear them. Smell them, feel them all around me.
But I don’t know these people.
They don’t mean anything to me.
