There’s a Madonnina in a small side street in Rome, not far from the Spanish Steps. Stoical, she observes from her nook as Fate plays out in the street below her. 

When she looks at you, a vague promise that you might be different to the others, that she might tell you secrets she hasn’t told anybody else flickers in her enamel eyes. You forget for just a minute that she’s only returning your gaze because you’ve positioned yourself just right and so for a moment you put your skepticism aside and lift your face to her, offering up your hopes and fears on a platter, like a real bona fide believer. 

“What should I do?”, you silently ask. But the answer never comes and suddenly you find yourself getting distracted, first by the layer of sticky dust on the hem of her blue and white robe, then by the white flecks of plaster peeking through where the paint has worn off. By the time you see the withered flowers left forever ago by someone else who also came with questions, the moment’s passed.

And just when you turn your back and start walking towards the rest of your life, the Virgin Mary, patron saint of lost souls, blinks in your wake. 

Beyond the open window, the sky simmers and electricity crackles along the wrong frequencies. The clouds seem as intent on preserving my secret as I am, shrouding me from the day and soaking up the light. My apartment is swathed in the comforting dullness of premature twilight. 

For now, Here is OK. Here is a little fart of solitude, an incontinent breach in Responsibility and Self Respect, a hiding place from everything and everyone else. Right now, not a single person knows that I’ve been lying on my bed for hours on end. Nor do they know that I’ve been playing dead for most of it.

With only my eyes opening and shutting.

If no one knows, then it doesn’t count. The tree falling in the forest, remember?

Inertia has completed its silent assault on my limbs. As my surrender is absolute, there’s nothing left to do but wait. For now, I figure I’ll just lie here and wait for the apocalypse. The fire, the brimstone, the horsemen. The whole fucking enchilada. 

Open, let light burn image on retina. Shut, chase negative against eyelids till light fades. Repeat.

In the meantime, try not to think about anything.

I listen to the empty courtyard, feeling like the Last Person on Earth. Now and again, an unmistakably low rumbling punctuates the dampened silence, like a crier announcing the coming attractions. 

The air holds me close in a sultry embrace. I abandon myself in it, letting my eyes wander over the ever-changing landscape of my room, courtesy of neglect. They contour the expanding pile of dirty laundry and the plant that is starting to crisp brown around the edges before finding a Polaroid I thought I’d destroyed. Too late. 

Thoughts are volatile and contagious, breeding spontaneously without asking for permission. I start thinking about how everyone believes they deserve to be happy, about winning the lottery, about the portiere at work and his Problems, about rotting fruit and desirable kitchens where the food comes out looking the way it should, before it’s arranged on interesting china that the desirable kitchen’s owner bought in a flea market during his latest trip to Venice. Mine is cluttered with things that do not belong to me and I use the top of my washing machine as a counter. I eat out whenever I can. 

I think about Other People and how good they are at things that I’m not, about how sometimes they just barge into your life without knocking, making tea differently to how you do it, leaving you to find tea bags in the biggest saucepan you own the next morning. 7 billion people on this planet and all with a different way of making tea. I’d shake my head in wonder if I had the energy.

The rain starts to come down in the hush of the afternoon. It hisses as it hits the cobbles of the courtyard, four floors down, making white noise. So much for the apocalypse. 

I end up thinking about earlier and how I hadn’t said anything, just sat there like I’d forgotten every single word in the world, waiting for the perfect closing sentence to take form and put my pride back on the pedestal where it belonged. 

But then he’d left and it didn’t matter anymore whether the words came or not, there was no one left to hear them. 

The gusts that breath life into my curtains now and again come laced with thunder. 

It’s August and it’s been raining almost every other day.  

People have taken to complaining about it, saying they feel cheated but you can tell that deep down, they’re secretly pleased that the universe is making their decisions for them. 

It’s the perfect cover. The perfect excuse to stop pretending to be the “master of your own fate, the captain of your soul’”, and just be. 

I feel the city sigh with relief. 

When you cut yourself by accident, the moment where the blade slices through your finger doesn’t hurt. The pain only comes with a split second’s worth of hindsight when the blood starts pouring out every which way, making a mess.

Fucking hindsight. 

All those words I’d forgotten earlier decide to make their entrance now, their hooks tearing welts into the soft underbelly of my ego. 

Whoever spread the rumor that time is the greatest healer was a pathological liar. Time doesn’t care about you or your problems. It doesn’t even know you’re there. Blink and you’ll miss it. That’s your life seen from a million light years away. Nature seems to know this and simply goes about its business. Only we’re deluded enough to think otherwise, I resolve, determined to cover everything in a fresh coating of sticky gloom. 

I think of the Madonnina despite myself.

So if you can’t cheat Time and the apocalypse isn’t coming, what else is there left to do?

The rain has stopped now and I can hear the world outside drip drying, apologetic sniffles that come after tears. 

Time’s up, the interval is over. 

I stand, awkward on my own legs and head towards the kitchen to make some coffee and find a cigarette.