A Friday Afternoon Apocalypse

There she held court. Turning first to her right, then to her left, she addressed her subjects in turn - exposing the secrets of the universe and the hidden truths about our common life. Alternating between narration and verse, the woman described the lives of those who wander the forgotten parts of our city streets. With fierce condemnation she called out the sexual violence perpetrated daily on those streets. She spoke with the voice of all the missing and murdered. She described innocence lost, children taken, trust betrayed. On the wings of strong and profaned language, her voice proclaimed to the world that the victims of this violence cannot be silenced.

I blinked. 

Curious about the identity of her audience, I peered across my empty mug at an equally empty cafe. The only souls in sight being myself and the proprietor who kindly brought the young woman a mug of water.

She blinked.

Her eyes burned with a fire that matched the heat of her words. Her long lashes fluttered like wings as her words took flight in that still space. I and the universe listened attentively as the apocalyptic truth about the city we call home was revealed in her speech.

I blinked again.

Customers enter. Unaware of what was taking place, their voices droned on in the mundane patterns of the conversation of the city. They studiously avoided her gaze, attempting to talk over or around her to avoid being confronted by someone they can only see as someone piteously afflicted by mental illness.

I couldn't look away.

Catching my gaze and smiling knowingly, the woman began weaving the phrases from the mundane droning into a new oration. As if knowing that the people of the city only pay attention to the successful and beautiful, she announced the sexual failings of Ryan Reynolds and the suicide of Selena Gomez. The aporia flowed from her lips, and she cocked her head with a pause after every utterance, as if waiting for the withheld response to these latest revelations.

We sat there that Friday for hours. The world came in and out of that shop with closed ears and carefully averted eyes. The woman spoke on and I listened. My mental health training tells me that she was mad and needed help. But maybe it is the world that is mad. Maybe in a world gone mad, God sends his prophets to speak the truth of our existence to us and we respond as we always respond; with deaf ears, blind eyes, and a scientific explanation at the ready to keep us from the wonderful intimacy of knowing and being known.


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