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monday



It’s a cardinal rule of nature, to be perpetually downcast on a Monday. The mist hovers some five centimetres above the granite road, just whispering against the tips of spring grass.

Head bowed as he walks, he absentmindedly knocks his black umbrella against the pavement, smiling wistfully when he sends the errant bird into a hesitant flutter before returning reproachfully to its pecking.

The wind smells different today.

Like camellias.



tuesday



The moon is but a sliver of light, barely a crescent tonight. A wave of nostalgia strikes him, as he gazes transfixed, his heartbeat hastening.

He remembers half perching on the neighbour’s oak tree as a child, trying to count the stars. Starting over again each night; and always coming up with a different sum. It was as if a spirit was pressing the refresh button on the heavens every night.

“What’s over there, mama?” He asks, as she plops herself down next to his slight body.

“Look and see, dear.” She replies, running a dry and cracked hand through his dark hair.

But even with his little face peeping through the leafy branches, he still cannot see past the distant silhouettes of mountains.

“It’s a big, big thing, this world.” She mutters softly, her face close to his.

“I’m going to find the edge one day, mama. I’m going to find the edge for you.”



wednesday



There’s one tree outside the back window; small, like it forgot how to grow one day. It could have mistaken it for dead, and for fifty one weeks of the year, it probably is. But there’s this one week at the end of autumn, when it explodes into a hundred shades of red.

His heart always breaks a little when the flowers vanish once again into light brown wood, the only proof of their existence in the small dunes of petals, doing tiny pirouettes whenever the wind blows.

And then, even they are gone. And he’s all alone again.

Except for the worn letter he always carries in his inner coat pocket, and the ring on his fourth finger that no one knows the why or wherefore of.



thursday



Yesterday’s raindrops hang on the dirty gutter, not quite ready to leave just yet.



friday



A seagull soars overhead, a wet piece of bread clutched tight in his claws. Its wings are bent slightly, with the weight of its load.

And he sighs.

Because he knows that sooner or later, the soggy morsel is bound to slip out of the bird’s tight grasp.

And he thinks,

Friday is for letting go.



saturday



He almost died for love once.

And he thinks maybe he would be happier if he had died in that epiphany of passion. Sometimes it hurt too much to live in the fallout.

Sometimes love hurts too much.

Maybe that’s the reason he had annihilated most everyone in his past. Because there are only a certain number of people you can lose before you stop believing in love.

He would like to say he doesn’t need love anyway. But it’s the second-to-last word in the letter he can’t bring himself to throw away.

And the first in the engraving of the ring he couldn’t take off if he tried.

You can’t run from love.

And deep in his heart, he knows he never will.



sunday



Sunday afternoon, he watches the rain trickle down the windowpanes, forming thousands of little puzzles that no one knows the answer to.

Sunday afternoon, he does quadratics. There is an earthy sense of comfort in the way everything falls into place in the end.

It’s not the kind of passion that men throw themselves off cliffs for, or the kind that make one scream with ecstasy. It’s not the kind of raw emotion that so many view as the paramount peak of life.

Instead, it’s a steady kind of calm, of getting it just right. That makes smile out loud, inside.

And he thinks that maybe, maybe,

Everything will be alright.