guts guile and glory

Why do Edmontonians walk so slowly? What is up with this? Is it common among members of this species?

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The skin of the matter is just this. A collection of dust too many years in the making. Suffice to say, the walls and sideboard and window-ledges are coated. What is this crippling silence in place of footprints and small collections of matted hair? Light pours in and casts shadows only on the furniture. I do not think anyone lives here any more. The flowers in the vase are bronzing and turning powdery. Their water is swampy. People are mute fixtures here, no different than a lamp. Only less willing to be studied at length.  A one-headed dog guards the stairs to the bedroom.

Every time I leave, people I know are standing, waiting. In arrivals. In the train station. Bits of recognition amid a collection of strangers. Businessmen on a mission to commute collide into my bare knees with the corners of their briefcases. Later, I fall on the blood-blisters to dig through luggage. Fold into the faces of the crowd. Skidding along asphalt, knowing, or perhaps just kidding myself. This must be the place. Talking heads framed in storefronts, on the streetcar, on the subway. A coiling the city’s belly, unforbidding.

guyyyyyyys?

I JUST WANT A FUCKING PIZZA.