Silence
Horrific, terrific silence.
It does not rattle me. It is a relief, instead,
This something more than quiet.
I am too broken to care;
Silence suits the shattered mind.
I was told of world’s certain end.
I did not care.
I began to realize my own absurdity;
It passed.
And
Now
An end to the noise
At last.
this day, I am human.
this body, it feels.
this mind, it exults.
this day will end.
this body will expire.
this mind will quiet.
And, for once, I think I’m OK with that.
-To Sleep! For comes
That greatest Escape.
Whirl Dream, Whirl.
You Wind of Half thought, of
Half Remembered
Half Forgotten
Tastes of Paradise.
Roses are certainly red.
Violets aren’t actually blue.
But, really- who cares?
I love you.
“Did you see that? Did you see that!” cried the child. He ran up to his parents. Between great gulps of air he tried explaining exactly what they should have seen. But Mother, nor Father, had any idea what to say. They had not seen. A few moments longer the Child remained, grin faded.
“Why don’t you go back and play some more?” suggested Mother. She straightened the picnic blanket. One corner had folded over. Father was Silent, smoking his pipe.
The Child, with shoulders slumped, the glint of excitement now gone, trotted away again towards the trees.
Mother turned to her husband. “He is such an odd child.”
Husband, now, replied, “He takes after my brother.” He blinked and glanced at Mother. Smoke curled weirdly and blew back into his face. He waved it away and sat silently again.
Wife had nothing to say, but Mother looked wistful. Her Child was running again, weaving between the trees, one arm outstretched. He charged the bushes, as if in chase, and disappeared from view. Her Child’s parting grin was infectious. It tugged at the corners of Mother’s lips. Father did not notice, but Husband surely scowled.
His Wife blushed, shamed. She brushed away a dirt speck or something. But only succeeded in making wrinkles. She brushed those away, too. If only everything else was so easy! Mother looked back to the trees, watching the underbrush rustle. If only!
The Child was having the time of his life now. Mother and Father had not seen! Wasn’t that freedom? A grin of grins- There was a Friend amongst the bushes! A Friend that darted here and there. A Friend with a Smile and an Ear. A Friend that could listen like a father and Smile like Mother. The Child chased and chased, what a friend!
Husband shifted on the blanket; his pipe run out.
“Where is your child?” he stated more than asked.
“I’ll tell you a secret, boy,” rasped the old, dying man. “For your poison, I’ll tell you my secret.”
The boy, really a man (was there any less, after only a day living in this world?), looked away, uninterested. He just wanted the man to die. Both were too weak for a fight, even for food, but poison… poison would do nicely.
The old man coughed.
“I found a place where no one lives. An alley, free of vermin, both rat-kind and human. Oh, I see you stir at that. Bahaha. I tell you this because it will be your end, and even knowing that, you can’t resist going.”
“For you will pay no mind the reason for its desolace. In that alley, I came upon a mural. A massive portrait of Midnight’s shadow painted in the ink of nightmares by the Witch in her own hour. No man was meant to see such a thing.
“For it takes a blind man to contemplate all those shades of black, a broken man to capture the whole perspective. But you say you are neither and you could, so you will go there and test yourself against it.”
Three days later, when the boy found the alley, he found no mural, but a mirror instead. And, in that instant, the boy knew the old man to be right.
No man could stand to see Black and Hell reflected in his own eyes.
I’ve always wondered what love felt like.
Wondered, wondered, and wondered.
And, I think in that wonder, I didn’t,
couldn’t,
see, what was right under my nose.
For in that timeless space of thought,
that wondering concealed,
the thought of ___, and love.
It’s odd, saying that now. That perhaps I do love, and that I know what love is.
But through that wonderful veil that I’ve so grown accustomed, everything, all emotion, feels alien.
So, those days I do not wonder, when I care not to-
Perhaps those are the days that hurt, because I feel.
Sometimes I sit and wonder about my life.
Sometimes I wonder why I wonder.
why I care.
Sometimes I just don’t care to wonder.
And it’s those times that hurt the most.
