I sit here on an old worn chair, nursing a damaged ego and a half full brown glass bottle filled with something intoxicating that tasted horrible at sometime tonight but now I react to it as passively as I do to the air I swallow with it. The events that brought me to this moment are so subtle that even I cannot recall them. If this has been fated then the fates truly are as mysterious and illusive as they are fabled to be. If this had been planned then God truly is unknowable to man, and far superior.

The sun setting over the water both amazes and revolts me. The glowing orb melting into the inconstant horizon, casting colors upon the waters of purples and blues; oranges that would put to shame any autumn in any wood in the world. There are also reds. Red that looks like blood spilling over the earth, washing up on the shore, staining the sands. Water like blood, which has happened before.

I am reminded of a man named Jesus who has spoken to me all of my life without ever saying a word. I do not know his face, nor his voice, but if his hand touched me I would not mistake, nor hesitate to embrace him as a friend. I taught this man named Jesus, and I healed him. For my time and for my effort he smiled at me. We met as friends, parted as enemies; chased shadows and smiled at memories.

Again my bottle is empty. With a deft motion, as proficient as any man has ever been at anything, the muscles in my arm move and then cease moving yet the bottle does not, spinning end over end like a lame and dying bird. Its first flight ends with a soft landing and a watery death. Ripples mourn its passing for a short time, then they to cease to move and there is nothing to remember for I have another bottle. It was the candle that burnt twice as bright, the most pious sacrifice that I could make for I have nothing else.

It is a celebration that I am holding, alone, with all of my friends. They are as absent as the man named Jesus, speaking and laughing and dancing without form, without sound. I will be able to see them, to speak with them, to touch them, I am sure, when I have sent enough bottles flying.

The sun itself is drowning. The water is lapping against its burning surface, cooling its anger, dimming its light and stabbing it with knives of truth and lies, all innocent seeming and passive. I would reach out to it, give it my hand and my assistance, as I did the man named Jesus, save it from drowning. I cannot do these things. What is worse is that I feel no remorse for my impotence, no loss for the great source of all light and heat as it sinks slowly before my red and bloodshot eyes.

An elegy is also beyond me. I have given too many. I have placed red, red roses on black, black earth enough times to sit on an old worn chair, nursing a damaged ego and a half full brown glass bottle alone, losing one more friend. It is all I can do to raise my bottle, nod my head, place the bottle to my lips and take one great swallow. The pitiful gestures of a pitiful man.

The water is blue, the blue of a calm after a trauma. The frozen color of the eyes of the man named Jesus. He told me once that water had been turned into blood and the shores had been stained with it. Soon I will leave this place.