Work Text:
It's always this way with urban cities.
There are buildings, and then there are more buildings, structure upon man-made structure. But when it's all concrete jungle with no real plants to speak of, the humans get sad; so all the little disjointed bits of land, anything they can scrounge up around the edges of brick and concrete and tile, they're all converted to bushes and trees, planted with a defeated hope, and the tidal wave of loneliness is pushed back by just a few centimeters.
You could not, in good conscience, call the thin strip of greenery and pavement bordering the ocean a park, and yet the word "Park" still resides persistently in its name: Keihinjima Tsubasa Park.
It is, in many ways, an underwhelming place.
There's a dull metal railing that runs monotonously along the soberingly straight boardwalk, frequented only by hobby fishermen and those in dire need of touching grass. If it weren't for the fact that the ground sloped downwards towards the ocean, the street not 10 meters away would be clearly visible from the boardwalk.
But even if there wasn't a slope, nobody came here to look towards the street. A pilgrimage through this part of the city, past warehouses and shipping containers and vast parking lots of 18-wheelers, so clearly marked by humanity and yet rife with the liminality of a place where nobody wanted to live, all to participate in the most distant form of people-watching.
Really, that's all this place is good for. Watching airplanes. See, look, straight from Google Maps: "Riverfront open space with views of airplanes taking off & landing, plus spots for BBQs."
Around the 15-minute mark is when most people briefly consider returning home. But the prospect of spending more time on transportation than at the actual destination is a bit demoralizing; and in that situation, there are benches dotting the walkway for you to park yourself on, so that you might despair without appearing suicidal.
This is an unlikely place for one to see a bronze statue. But probability doesn't care about you, even though you ought to care about it, and the likeness of a birdman of indeterminate age sits serenely on one side of a bench, wings outstretched, as though cradling some unseen sitter besides him. He's looking so softly, so kindly, so benevolently at the void besides him, his left hand outstretched, as though to rest on an invisible thigh, to hold an invisible hand.
This is, of course, exactly what the statue had been put in place for. The hand, cupped gently into one half of a clasp, has been polished to a brassy shine after years of being caressed by the grateful living. This birdman is loved, and not without reason.
They say that there's a form of divinity found in the near-death, that when your mortal vessel becomes damaged to the point that your soul nearly breaks free, you kiss the back of god's white-hot hand, so brilliant it becomes cyan to our three-coned eyes. And that's why there are always flowers resting in the lap of the sculpture. Because the taste of god's mercy is a ghost pressed upon those lips, which haunts the survivors across the best and worst of their days.
The flowers lay there, quietly, watching the passing airplanes, taking in the sunrise, listening to the sway of the ocean waves crashing against the embankment. And on Thursdays, they disappear.
They still can't tell whether he's human or birdman. But he moves with the confidence of someone who owns the place, and once he had even been mistaken for the artist of the piece on sheer bravado alone. Nobody has ever tried to stop him from taking the flowers.
Some days he only stops by briefly, when it's raining, or just after a tragedy and there's a small crowd gathered round, or when he's presumably busy— just a quick trot down from the street, taking the flowers into his arms. They're hastily shoved into the passenger seat of his modest Toyota Camry, and then he's gone.
But most days, on the most peaceful of days, when he shows, he lingers. Sits beside the statue, as though it were an old friend, clasping his soft hands with the polished metal. The look on his face is so reverent it's almost sorrowful, and one might wonder what it was that troubled him so. But very few have the courage to disturb a man so lost in his own world.
So he sits, quietly, alone and yet not without company, as the sun dips beneath the horizon behind him, the metal turning cold beneath his hands, until it's time to leave.
There is going to be a day, at some point down the line, where nobody will remember kissing the hand of god. And he supposes, then, the flowers will stop coming. But until he is put to rest, or until its legacy is buried beneath the grace of a greater god, this duty will continue ceaselessly.