Brown and blue

Brown

He sits alone in a quiet, deafening room, blood thumping to echoes of merely memory. Safe, now, in the cool darkness, a life apart from the dusty dying sand. Pounding through his eyes are the sun and the heat and the speckled uniforms that didn't hide him quite well enough. A dream. Only particles of days gone. He cannot sleep.

Limp

They've given him a plastic stick. Frosty metal and molded rubber to hold up what is left of a man. Psychosomatic. In his head, muddling reality. He offered his life. It was borrowed and returned broken.

Sweater

An extra layer between him and stabbing icy gusts. A neutral color for a nondescript man with a cane and a limp and no place to go. Except maybe this chair. He punches an embroidered pillow behind his back, shrugs into peachy threadbare velvet upholstery. It's no good. Tapping his third leg on the wooden floor, he waits for something. Maybe he hopes. Either way, when the tall man beckons, he chases him through the door.

Scarf

The place smells like wine and tomatoes, spices, garlic. He blinks uncomfortably at the red-checkered table. Simple conversation has not gone well. Dark hair suspended over a pale, moon-lit face and glowing eyes send him sprawling over the smallest of words. His companion must be cold, still wrapped up in woolen warmth.

Run

Over crumbling brick roofs, down clinking shaking metal stairs, through whistling shadowy alleys, across shouting paved streets they gasp and pull and chase. It's a mistake. His friend says something mad. Breathless and helpless, he laughs and follows again, ducking and darting and hiding to home.

Blue

He stands by a car mounted with glaring, flashing lights, absorbing all, seeing little. Past the yellow strip sits a man he trusts, tugging jerkily at a red-orange fleece blanket. His friend speaks to a gray-haired detective, looks over at him, stops talking, flaps the blanket in the detective's face. He sees only his friend's eyes, open, clear, focused back on him as the man with the blanket approaches. He is reassured. He will rest.