Empty Pavements

He made his way, hesitantly, and with knees and ankles jarring at every step, along the pavement. It felt alien and hard, as if the stone was jealously protecting its personal space. People stared at him as they walked past, some even stopped to talk about him, pointing and laughing. But not talking to him – it was as if he wasn’t even there. In a way he felt that he wasn’t.

He felt dislocated. Like a shoulder socket wrenched from its place he was floating painfully in a pool of pale fluid. These people were not his people. This ground was not his ground. And the funny thing was that it was spreading. His feet did not feel so much like his feet as they used to; and his thoughts were beginning to scatter and hide as if scared of eviction.

***

He was pounding the street s in breathless sprints – casting his eyes this way and that – desperate but with the patient air of one practiced in desperation. Beads of sweat rolled uninterrupted down the sides of his brow and flew from his jaw, warm brown eyes searching, searching, scanning the cityscape horizon with an intensity that made you long to be the one he was searching for and at the same time made you scared that you might be. He turned another corner.

***

Sure enough he felt lost, but it must be said that he didn’t know it. He caught glimpses in his mind of a memory or a hope, a feeling of welcome, a warmth, almost his own reflection, but whenever he tried to identify it all he could do was watch it flee into some darker corner of his self, scared by the clatter of his feet on the pavement. To walk on ground that is not your own for too long – it is the ache. The ache is nearly unnoticeable and nearly unbearable. A fatigue crept up his limbs and into his body. A loneliness. A dullness.

His heart beat faster.

***

His heart beat faster. His gaze melted into the deep, deep affection of fatherhood. His breaths became longer and less hurried but his steps quickened and grew lighter.

***

A thrill of peace rushed through his body, he could feel blood rushing out around his body as his feet became his once more, his thoughts gathered themselves from the nooks and crannies of his restless mind and assembled into one, overwhelming, gentle lump, one word: found. He had found himself, he had found what he had been looking for – he had realised what he had been looking for! – and he had been found. All at once. Fond memory and cherished hope crashed together like two great opposing waves and his soul was filled to overflowing with liquid peace. Rest. He felt the arms reach around him and gather him up. He felt his feet softly lift away from the alien ground.

***

The shepherd gently placed his sheep across his shoulders and, ignoring the startled looks of the city-dwellers passing on either side, began the long walk home.