The Bench

I am sitting on a bench, behind me a corrugated iron salutation to the afterlife that is an old non conformist chapel.  It is November and bitter cold, the chill wind condensing my breath like an overworked locomotive.  Soon, though, it will be over for I can feel the life ebbing from me, leaking from my soul into the freezing ether in which I sit.  Occasionally someone will walk by, not seeing me nor my dissapating essence.  A young mother pushes a pram grimly against the biting breeze and I smile weakly at the babe inside, nose pinched cherry red by Jack frost; the little thing gives me a curious and knowing look.

I sit here because I have run out of loved ones passed away, and my family seed scattered and distant as the stars.  Annoyingly my life is not providing the volunatry newsreel in the way people believe it will, so I set my mind to it while I still have the chance; my eyes close with the effort of trying to understand what it was all for.

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