The Jaywalker

The city has evacuated the streets at this hour, and vacancy has given his unsteady feet right of way at every intersection. The traffic lights, sticklers for rules, continue color-coding priorities for non-existent movements, frowning on his jaywalking but indifferent to his zigzagging. The bar has dispensed all its sympathy for one night, so the flood of misery has now been diverted by closing time into the open, private grief on public display on an empty street, the whiskey in his stomach threatening an uprising, pushing his upper body and legs in two different directions but doing nothing to blot out the full-screen news ticker rolling across his consciousness for the first time with a single breaking story: SHE LEFT ME FOR ANOTHER MAN SHE LEFT ME FOR ANOTHER MAN SHE LEFT ME FOR ANOTHER MAN . . . He’s reeling from the hollowness that still seems to be expanding in him, feeling singled out for suffering, not yet knowing that he’s merely following in the footsteps of countless others who have lurched and stumbled in the same way to a semblance of emotional balance, the pain inoculating him against future pain. Through all the green and amber and red lights he staggers on towards the limits of innocence, until the night furls its shadows, and the sky is a furtive grey.