The Peddler

Here - my treasures, my wares. I sell each of them for a coin a piece. They stopped using money long ago so only the ones who want desperately enough what I sell will undergo the trouble of finding a coin. It's become more difficult these days but - my wares are such that I am never short of clients. There are many; I forget all their faces.

I am easy to find. Listen, for the soft clinking of metal in my pockets, in my hat and the cuffs of my pant legs. In any light you'll see me - shining and gleaming with a thousand dulled copper-iron eyes. Coins - clattering, serpentine strands - hang from the soft trains of my long coat. I've had to lengthen them, every year, and fold them double. Didn't I tell you? Look only into some dismal back alley street and you'll find me. Or don't. You'll find me anyways.

My coat is beautiful, no? I don't feel its growing weight; I mark every transaction only by the slowing of my pace. The world speeds by and I've lost the tally of time but it never interested me much, anyway. Come here, come closer. See how that metal shines? It is more beautiful than I...

Would you like to walk with me for a moment? Let me show you, the things I sell. You will find it nowhere else - the streets, the clouds, the sidewalks caught in rain are empty, empty. I am the only one who can offer you anything. There was one, like me, before, but they've been gone a long time.

Open your hand. Can you feel it's weight? This is just one of my many wares and perhaps the most popular. It is, as I have formed it, colorless, unfinished, crystalline. To be morphed and warped into the shape, form and hue of your choosing. It will grow to any tremendous size but, please, take caution. Power, as it is so named, is not inherently dangerous but use it too often and you will find yourself emptied of everything else. I will have to come back for you, then. Give it here; carefully now.

I will press into your palm another of my wares and you will tell me, without looking, its name. Yes - that's correct. Strange, isn't it? To know and to feel beauty's fair form without having ever set your eyes upon it? I apologize but return it, also, lest it grow cold in your hands. It seems to spoil sooner than it did before but I cannot know for certain - I've abandoned time and consider the passing of the second and the hour one and the same.

Have I kept you long? Have I shown you my other wares? I sell power and beauty just as easily as death and decay. I can keep nothing for myself - nothing at all. I carry everything in oceans and can distribute only teaspoons at a time and I -

It was worse. In the beginning.

Do you know what it means? Would you even care to listen?

I am trying to empty myself. I wander alleys and lone roads and empty sewer lines in search of more people to ease what I was given. They flock to me, but it is never enough. I give them whatever it is they desire and they pay me in coin. Just one, only ever one. How ridiculous. A single coin for a happiness that could last their entire lives. One coin to restore health, another to speed death and yet another to split the seas. One coin to command, even, the passage of time.

I am not beautiful. Look at me - I have no face, no being, no soul. I am everything but that doesn't mean anything; therefore, I am the same as nothing. I fill that same space and am composed of the same things. If I am equal parts love and hate than what does that make me?

Perhaps, perhaps! I cannot die, but perhaps I can make myself into something that will. And what, save beauty, dies more quickly?

If I have frightened you, I apologize. Truly. I think, it would be best, if you and I were to part ways at least for this moment.

If you, by chance, decide you ever need something from me, I am easy to find.

Listen, for the soft clinking of metal in my pockets, in my hat and in the wind. You'll see me in any light, shinning, gleaming, Argos- eyed. Coins - clattering, serpentine strands - hang from the soft trains of my coat that I've had to lengthen, year after year...

Didn't I tell you?

(I am tired, more than you'll ever know.)