[22 November 2020]
Time stood still, and
I notice all that I had left
unnoticed until this moment. White
clouds and star-frost. Black pens
and yellow paper lying around me in
a heap. The sound of each tear tears
deep, wrenching an almost-clean
break too long in the coming. Unnoticed
by design, by practice, by study,
uncoming by sheer
force of will stubborn enough to
twist this man into the shape of
the thing he fears the most:
himself.
I am
at once impulsive and reticent. Hesitant
and reckless. The sound of laughter that echoed
down the quiet winter street, buried alive,
left for dead, walks once more in the
corridors of my memory (I had shoved
them off until I was too drunk
on possibility to feel the pain of
letting go). Footsteps overhead
and water in the drainpipes both
leave me with a sense of absence,
of vacancy – a strange and willful
unknowing of who I am and what
brought me to this place.
The wind-up clock tick-tock
tick-tocks, drawing distance
between me and myself with each
stroke. Phantoms of finally-forgottens
rise up in the sleeves of old sweaters
and the shadows cast by old candles. The
click-clack of keys too familiar and
the subject too daunting to do anything
but surrender.
Leave a Reply