LOOK BOTH WAYS
16
Dawn came slowly, but in full it came, as they came, the shopkeepers and the shoppers.
He heard them vaguely, but his eyes did not see, for he shook in the throes of his fever. He felt wretched and amazed at the same time. He had stood and sat all night long in the centre of the Market Square, in the middle of the thunder and the rain, and nobody had come.
That was a first, and it managed a thin smile, in spite of his ills, as his body and limbs trembled and shook on the ground, while he lay curled up and hugging his knees like a wayward mongrel dog. He knew his expensive suit was drenched right through, and of course, to his underwear, again.
My Father, he thought in his delirium, you have never abandoned me, but in my man’s thinking thoughts on my last night I thought such, yet in my male’s feeling heart and soul I knew you were with me, even unto this brand new day and always, even.
He heard them gather round him in the far off distance, and talk in their native tongue, but he understood their words of compassion and concern, one and all. And he loved them for it in his mind, for his teeth were chattering too much in his suffering to allow him to form any words of thanks.
Arms, strong arms, many arms grasped him gently all over his trembling body, but their quiet strength bore him upward and into their hearts, while he entered theirs in mind and was welcomed.
When I was once among you, his male heart whispered to his thinking man’s fever-crazed mind. I said that he must suffer and he did, for you. But now he suffers no longer.
He lives and he loves, with you now, among you now, and inside of you now, as a man and as a male of pure human heart and nature.
His eyes gazed almost unseeing at the bright morning sky, as it sailed slowly past his vision like a moving panorama, yet he felt, as if he were lying on a field and looking up at the heaven of day, but he knew it was he that was moving beneath it.
I was a stranger, and you invited me in, his genetic thoughts reminded him. I was without clothes, and you clothed me. I was ill, and you cared for me.
He sighed deeply, as he felt himself being lowered downward slowly and felt at peace with the world and all who visited him now in his darkest hour.
I was in a prison of my own thoughts, himself whispered to him. And denied the feelings of who I am, and then you visited me.
Then the sun became too bright for the strength of his tired eyes in illness to cope with any longer. When the welcome blackness beckoned him strongly he listened to it, and then he looked both ways, and then he yielded, but before he did, himself reached out to himself from across the centuries and helped him gently to sleep very, very deeply.
Once I gave my life, he received from himself with love transcending time and distance as no barrier, as was foretold by the prophets. This time I will not. It would have been better if I had not been born then, as I am born now.