camping out beneath stars, the smell of pine deep in stinging his nostrils till he thought a capillary or two might burst, he remembered instead the smell of the bourbon drifting back through his throat when he sat in the alley, watching the cats skulk, the rats creep, and the headlines proclaiming the end of society. when he looked up, the brick wall across from him was still real, a flawed pattern, its consistency just inconsistent enough to get forever lost in if he'd been an ant on his way home. he took another pull, and he was back in the woods, Venus bright and foggy high above. It was this moment, the first time he ever realized that he would never go there. That he was forever stuck in the corner of the room, looking out but unable to move.
A raven crowed in the trees some distance away, its weight audible in the branches. He passed out and went back to the city.
"Hey bud." A polite kick woke him. "Hey bud." "You can't stay here."
He brought his bulk slowly upwards, a strand of drool still clinging from his lip to the bottle's. His stomach was heavier than he remembered it being. He must've eaten somewhere.
"Hey bud."
"I'm goin," he tried to say. He fell over instead. The voice game him one more polite kick and faded away.
The smaller tree branches rubbed against each other like conniving fingers. A hole went right through his middle, as if he'd left part of himself in the city. An organ or two. The roots under his back were making inroads beneath his flesh, twining between his fingers, propping him up.
It was some time later that he woke. He knew because the morning light that'd been coming on was gone, replaced by full dark again. A deep orange glow filled the air and danced in the pavement. If he could stand there was a park bench across the street. Just there. Maybe 20 steps away. 20 normal steps. 20 steps through traffic. The first 5 or so out in plain sight of the people walking to somewheres, walking in shiny shoes, walking between appointments, walking through cell phone air, walking over his rootfingers. He felt tied to the spot. Everything waited beyond the alley. If he could stand. One of the cats came and nuzzled at his outstretched hand. Its ribs were clearly visible, and he thought how easily it would be crushed if he were to step on it. If he could stand. Not that he would. Step on it, that is. It was just something that occurred to him. To make him feel like he might be a bad person. But that he might not know, because he couldn't seem to get moving, anyway. Maybe that was the reason for it.
The thing was, the sky was nice and small in the alley. Only at noon could it reach all the way down to him. Also the noise, the noise was close, but contained, as if the mouth of it all was a TV set blaring in the corner. But actually, he realized that night in the woods, he was the one in the corner. But all the same, his roots could spread beneath the surface into the soles and hearts of the folks out there while he stayed secret. Invisible. A part of the scenery. Drunk.
This night, the one where his fingers lay in the woods while he stared at the city flickering in its porthole, what sky he accessed was a deep and hooded purple. Ravens lined the upper edges of the brick buildings and hopped up and down the fire escapes. If he didn't move, which he couldn't anyway, it was impossible to distinguish the bottom of the stairs from the top. So it appeared instead as if an obsidian lattice extended from the rooftop of each building, myriad rectangles intertwined and inhabited by avian giants fluttering above a primordial ocean.
The bottle was empty. Shit. The bottle was empty. But there was another one. Another one somewhere.
Somewhere. Was it here?
Would he have to stand? Could he?
No, there it was. Turned on its side beneath a torn carry-out box. He wasn't going to open it just yet, but he touched it with a finger to make sure. He wasn't going to open it just yet. A light from the back of the alley shone through the amber. He wasn't going to open it just yet. Leave the golden firefly a bit longer. Then he would drink it. Once the cat left. Once it stopped watching him.
Instead of going back to sleep, he considered that he might write a poem about roots. About roots below the city but above the sewer. He considered that it might make him famous. He considered how then how much they'd look up to him for being drunk and dirty and wanting to step on cats.
In the poem, the roots would go up into the heel of each person who lived beyond the alley, and freeze them in place. They would all miss their appointments. Their phone batteries would die. They would have to look at each other. Maybe start a conversation. The ones right here by his alley would even have to look at him. They wouldn't talk to him, they would talk to the other, real people nearby, but they would see him, see his roots. In the poem, a man who had lived in the sewer would be smothered by the growing roots. They would break down his corpse for nutrients, needed for all the people stuck in place and unable to go to restaurants or cafés anymore.
He considered that his poem was a good idea, and he thought out the first stanza in his head, a thing that he would write and show to people, and read fervently aloud in the places where people listened to things. Once he could. Get up.
In the Woods, Venus waited. She stood aloft, a single bright eye of judgement shrouded in the purple fog. She seemed to be the candle around which the hooded black shapes crowded and sharpened their beaks. She seemed to be a light across a channel which flashed him a signal in Morse code that he couldn't decipher. She seemed to be the business end of an infinite needle held in the Sun's fire, and pointed straight at the space behind his eyes. She seemed to be a hole in his dark corner through which he could see that there was light in some other place outside it. She told him there were other lights, too, but he saw only the purple dark and the black.
In the Alley, the TV set was still blaring, the people still on track to their appointments. And it was time to open the second bottle. Then he could get up. Then he could get up.
