Like a mirrored pool
My friend can travel through time and space
with a blink of his eye
completely uninhibited. It's true
I have a friend that exists in moments
in images of memories
It's got to be true
A neighbor of mine is a train driver
When you drive trains for a living, you hit and kill
an average of two human beings during your working life
He has told me this
It has to be true
People take their steps
They make their choices
seek their paths
My neighbor, the train driver, has seen three people step out
from the edge of a platform and into an eternity
"Do you know the worst part?," he asks me
and I don't
"It's their eyes
how they wander, looking for purpose," he says
"Like if an answer or solution should be there
somewhere in the last trembling moments
before they disappear
But instead of answers or solutions
they find me
latching all their sorrow and confusion onto me
and I don't have any answers to give them
No solutions
no comfort
nothing"
You blink about 20 times a minute
That's 1,200 times an hour
We raze the world
We create it again
I continue to search for clues
They are everywhere: in long-forgotten conversations
in film scenes that remind us of reality
Mario was leaning against the building by the bus stop
He was waiting for me, like he sometimes did
We were slowly drifting apart
Soon we could barely hear each other anymore
"I've figured something out. Wanna hear?," Mario said
"Sure," I answered
"What if the universe is infinite
meaning there is no end to it?
Then nothing is missing"
Since Mario was forced to leave his job
he had become increasingly difficult to grasp
He had started to come up with weird theories
about how the world around us worked
"Everything has already happened somewhere
and all events that have ever happened
have already had all possible outcomes
Am I right?"
I often got tired of him
He talked about every theory like it was his own
But all of them, nonsensical or not
were just sketch-like products of his confused mind
"It means that every single possibility results in every possible way
Which means the two of us exist
on all of these levels at the same time"
"What exactly do you mean?," I said
Mario grinned, and looked at me
his face pulsating, his eyes trembling
There was something wrong with him
Now I saw it
His madness shone like a halo around his head
"I know how to jump between these parallel worlds, my friend"
He blinked
"Here I am, in a world where you don't take me seriously"
He blinked again
"But now... now you do"
The black pupils in his face were tunnels
that led into a place I had never known before
where a loneliness without mercy or limits
was watching, waiting
I was never worried about Mario, not really
It's only now, in retrospect
that I see him as something else
something more than a friend
something larger than just a human
A passenger, perhaps
A boundless traveler between dimensions
The man he once was is now a construction
a place, of sorts, we constructed
for the purpose of leaving it behind
A few nights later, Mario came by my apartment
He spoke of time
"Time is movement
A memory is still, and never grows old
Every now is a frozen moment
a picture in our memory in which we actually exist
Therefore, we are eternal
If everything is eternal, there are no interruptions
Life and death become meaningless constructs"
The dark sun in his chest put his thoughts on fire
When I think about him that evening
I see his trembling hands
I notice how he seems to be gasping for air between words
His face is red and sweaty
and I feel the heat through his body
But I see no sun
There is no sun
Later that night, I called Mario's sister
and told her what I knew
The young woman cried
a broken, pitiful voice on the other side of the phone
Her despair was the worst kind
the forever powerless
one realizing the inevitable
One week later, Mario jumped in front of a train
and I wonder if our time together
was just one possible reality
or several of them melded together simultaneously
I wonder if he jumped to a parallel reality
where he could be himself
where we take care of our broken ones
Then I get scared
What if he failed?
If he stared into the train driver's eyes
like a paralyzed animal
and got stuck into that sole moment forever
And now I keep searching for clues, for signs
something that tells me he is alright
like a quote from a movie scene
or a few words written on a park bench
I am looking for a message from a friend
Something that tells me
that he can handle himself wherever he is now
that I couldn't have done more to help him
that life is not a pause from death
That it's actually the other way around