Rocks

Man sits on cliff edge, watches the devouring jaws of Poseidon grind against sharp black stone. Three nights without sleep, made manifest in body bag eyes and trembling hands. The prodigal son can not return home. Even if he did, the lock's changed.

Smokes endless cigarette while trying to patch the fractured thoughts into one. The lock has changed. Pulls age old watch, gold engraved, from a torn jacket pocket. Time. The crippled second hand limps in Saturnine circles, each dying click followed by an hour of silence. He smiles for the first time in weeks. Time, an elusive phantom hidden from those who need it, refuses to move when no longer required- a drunken buddha, eyes locked on an unworthy disciple.

Man tosses watch, the relic of a father's father- strangers both- over the edge. Generations lost, history forgotten and hope of the future disappears into the chasm. Now. It's a long way down, but it's even further to get back up- and this is the end of the track. Sisyphus refuses, and with a finger of defiance pointed at Zeus, Jesus, Sigmund Freud or who ever the hell else might be listening, screams "This boulder shall burden me no more!". A laugh escapes his chapped and bleeding lips as he feels the weight for the last time. Let go.

Takes one last drag, pulling himself to frozen feet and legs which shake beneath him. Arms spread like the fallen angel Xaphan, Ocean spray replacing the smouldering abyss. He might have made it.

If he hadn't hit the rocks.