THE WISDOM OF POE TEXTERMAN
Charlie watched his heart go higher and higher. His faith was attached to it; the higher his heart went, the farther away his faith was. At first he lost faith in beneficial yet unproven notions, like gravity, the benefits of compassion, that things have a way of working themselves out. Which was why Charlie felt that running after his heart wasn’t worth the effort. As his heart continued its ascent, Charlie lost his faith in humanity. And as his heart became a black dot in the sky, then got so small he could no longer see it, he lost faith in himself. He sank to his knees in the middle of the street, stopping traffic in both directions.
One of the drivers affected by Charlie’s collapse was Poe Textermen. A tall, thin man with the head of a raven, Poe was driving a van for the Sarzanello Moving Company and was running late. He was also one of only twenty-six people to ever have been born in Metaphoria. Poe wasn’t trying to trigger a poof. Metaphoria was his home. Poe knew Metaphoria better than anyone else. His car was directly in front of Charlie. Having seen this situation before, Poe got out of his car and leaned against the hood. He gave Charlie what he considered enough time, and then he spoke.
‘Hey, buddy. Everybody breaks down, but you can’t do it in the middle of the street,’ Poe said.
Charlie didn’t move. At this moment his entire belief system was unravelling like a poorly knit acrylic sweater. His belief in even simple things, like that he had a right to continue existing, or an ability to heal himself, was so tenuous that even certain phrases would have shattered him into pieces too small to mend. Had Poe shouted at Charlie and demanded he move, he would have further lost his faith in humanity, which would have destroyed him. Had Poe thrown out a solution, suggesting that Charlie’s problem was so trivial it could be cured by casual words tossed out by a stranger, he would have begun shrinking so quickly that anyone watching would have assumed he’d disappeared.
Poe’s response did something quite different, which produced a completely unexpected result. The absence of heavy-handed compassion made Charlie feel a little less breakable. Poe’s lack of a proposed solution acted as a form of permission, an acknowledgement that the act of falling apart, of losing one’s shit utterly and absolutely, wasn’t a sin, or even a weakness, but a shared part of the human condition.
Charlie Waterfield stood up. He looked for Poe but couldn’t see him. Poe was already back behind the wheel. Having found the radio station he was looking for, he looked up and, seeing that Charlie was still in the middle of the road, began honking loudly and repeatedly.
‘Thank you,’ Charlie said.
Charlie took several deep breaths. He looked up at the sky. He saw a tiny black dot falling through it. The black dot was too far away for Charlie to run after. He would never catch it before it landed. All he could do was keep his eyes on it as it fell to earth. But Charlie’s heart never hit the ground. It landed with a sudden and deafening boom on the roof of the Tachycardia Tower.