After a bombing silence resumes ...

After a bombing silence resumes, sparrows chirp again. In the aftermath of somebody's death the ordinary and the extraordinary coexist, your despairing self can't fail to notice the sound of the dust cart collecting the garbage down and out.

Gracefully the woman blinds the sunlight in her eyes with her right hand. The traffic in the roundabout is intense, jamming at times, its steady rumble annoying. She's tired of waiting, she has just been waiting for too long. Feeling disappointed she heads her steps for the underground. Her time is so precious she hates to waste it purposelessly. She takes loads and loads of undeserved responsability, commitment, integrity, excellence, on her shoulders. She is no unprincipled person. There was a good reason for the meeting, she knows, yet as time her expectations are fading away. No, hope does not spring eternal.

The train comes with a shrieking sound and a precursor wind which pulls and drags the litter left lying in the platform. She boards in and finds no place to sit. She swears to herself. The glance of anonymous commuters meets hers. She likes being looked at, it strengths her already strong confidence. Timid waves of hunger in her stomach remind her she has just skipped lunch to meet him. Her disappointment grows. You didn't show up, you fool. He better has a convincing alibi. He was well aware of the importance of the meeting, what with his elaborate words for a turn of events.

When she gets off the train she sees a little boy crying amidst the frenzy of a hasty crowd which floods the platform and the entire station. That's something she can't stand, little kids crying. It always makes her feel real sad, instinctively, effortlessly. She does nothing, unable to react. She just stands where she is, staring at the boy's face, filled with tears, while his mother drags him by his arm towards the exit door, carelessly.

A cloudless sky greets her in the street. She walks the last few quarters home, stopping at a grocery store to buy a few apples. Someone calls out her name when she's about to get home. It's not him, just a recent acquaintance from the gym. She has to climb the stairs to the fifth floor, the lift stopped working last weekend. The cell phone rings when she's looking for the key, biting a mouthful worth of red delicious. His call stops before she can answer. Much too late to call me don't you think. She doesn't call back, she can sense the implicit failure carried in his undelivered words. Instead, she undresses herself, brushes her teeth, and takes a long relaxing bath.

By the time she's done the heat of the day is almost gone. The street lights gradually turn on. Someone or something somewhere has just made that little magic. Her agenda is a complete mess. She sighs, wondering how things have come to this. There's those rare moments of clarity when the clouds in her head dissolve and stupor recedes, when she knows then and there nothing is worth the pain. For a split second the fuss would be over, she would focus, she would feel strong enough to bring her long lost soul back, she would scheme a detailed plan to recover it.

Muted jazz music reaches her ears, it's origin unknown, She likes jazz, sometimes, the melancholy that music brings. The distant sound of an alarm bell bursts in, merging flawlessly in tune with a tenor sax solo, only to last for a few seconds.

Confidence is a slippery belief. The smallest bit may ruin the delicate balance upon which it depends, adjusting and readjusting it again and again, playing tricks with your mind for the sake of that longing stability, for the benefit of such firm trust. It is also on those moments of clarity that she knows that the weight on her shoulders is much too heavy, that the emptiness in her soul is much too wide to admit refilling, nevermind the dedicated scheming.

Tears of sadness fall on her bare chest. This never happened before. She knows he will never find a relief to the passing of her soul. In the aftermath of her death the ordinary and the extraordinary will coexist in someone else's desperation as sparrows will keep on with their pleasant chirping.