A man and A woman

[morrigan]

I walk the dog at midnight.  The pavements are slick with winter rain that is freezing into speckled ice.  The soles of my boots skid almost imperceptibly.   I hear a woman scream, high and ragged.  Immediately I am alerted.  I scan the dark horizon.  I see her some distance off, running across a road.  She is a mere shadow.   I walk in the direction she is running, worried momentarily that perhaps she has become maddened and will scream at me.  I wonder whether she is shouting into a mobile phone.   I see him in front of her, a dark and light stripy jumper.  She is pursuing him but he does not break his stride of singularity.  From somewhere deep inside her another gut wrenching howl, ‘I love you so fucking much’.  He continues to walk away from her.  She quickens her pace and draws level with him, half grabbing, half jumping at him.  She hits him.  For a moment they tussle and she collapses on the floor, folding up under the weight of her own drunken pain.  The man walks away.   She is lying on the ground.  Her throat must be open because the sounds from it are reverberating around the park, ricocheting off the trunks of trees, rattling the empty winter benches, strafing the low grass   He returns to her and pulls her to her feet.  She flops against him like an unfastened puppet.  He holds her under her arms and she falls into him.  It’s all she wants, to be absorbed by him and granted strength through acknowledgement.   He rises again and set out from her.  With every step he takes the distance between them increases.  She stands, her arms flailing, no sense emerging from her contorted mouth that can only plead in half grunts and shrieks, but then he returns again and I see them silhouetted in the distance.   I walk to where I can’t see them, knowing my circle will bring me back to their position, my cycle of movement will always bring me to their place.  The dog trots.  The cathedral in front of me is illuminated against the night sky with blue-green light.  Traffic passes me, all people going somewhere, or coming from somewhere.  A drunken man lurches in his approaching walk.  I turn the corner and they are there again.   He walks in front of her and she trails behind him in a staggering confusion.  He pauses.  She hurries to reach him, her whole body propelled towards him.   I draw closer to them.  I can see her clasping at him.  He takes her hand and punctures her anger.  I am parallel with them now.  She is limp in the tears she has shed, exasperation thickens his voice ‘I love you,’ he says, ‘I just can’t do this anymore’.  She is sniffing.  I can hear her heels against the concrete.  ‘I’m sorry,’ she is saying, as I cross their path and head towards the road.