The End on 30th and Olive WORDS BY CHAD MATTHEWS
She stands at the edge of town and looks out at the slow setting sun and thinks, there is no one waiting for me. So she aimlessly wanders out of the familiar grid of downtown and decides on Olive Street. Walking in the middle of the tree-lined street amongst quiet homes, it feels as though she’s stepped into another world, and she briefly loses herself in the memory of another time in her life, back when she was whole. She pauses at the corner of 19th and Olive and looks up as darkness spreads through-out the purple sky. She prays against it, asking God to hang the sun in the sky for just a minute longer. She has no idea where she is going. Will this be the night? Is this the end? The questions no longer scare her. Not now. She’s tired and her body aches from sleep-less nights spent in abandoned buildings and makeshift camps. She notices the skeletal limbs of old trees reaching out for her, and the road suddenly becomes a black hole she feels herself sinking into. The world, she decides, is turning against her. She looks into the sky and says, Are you there? Silence. She continues down Olive Street and looks through the square window of each house and catches scenes of what she’d always wished her life was––a woman bathing her newborn in the 38
ALT Magazine
January 2015
sink, bubbles floating up; a man and a young boy high-fiving, their faces lit by the glow of the television; an older couple sitting at a kitchen table, laughing. Life, she thinks. Her body feels loose now, as if it’s coming undone, so she pauses on 30th and Olive and looks up to the sky again. It’s beautiful now, infinite and bright. She wonders, Can anyone see me? Am I here? Am I alive? The world reaches out and shoves her, and she begins stumbling in the loose gravel of Olive Street. Now the sky spins, everything blurred and out of focus, and though there is chaos, she cannot help but feel as though she is caught in freedom. She will not brace for the fall. The pieces of her life are broken and she decides she will no longer attempt to put them back together. She is finished wondering what life could be like. Now she’s falling. She lands in the front yard of a house on the corner of 30th and Olive, beneath the busted bulb of a rusted lamp post. She feels the cold earth beneath her and the sky above her, and finally everything feels okay, so she rolls onto her side and places her hands beneath her head, deciding that whatever happens, she will be fine, she will be fine. I saw her then. Walking through the house, I glance through an half-open