The Last Throes

So here I am, foreigner in his own land, struggling to comprehend what he has done and what he hasn't done. A tunnel surrounds my eyes that are slowly being hacked away at a meticulous pace. There's a heart in there somewhere that cries out in agony every single second of the day, but I try to muffle its screams. My mind's eye flashes guilty images and perversions and trials gone wrong. I check the time again. I am no closer to my destination. Impatient, I look for an exit. The door, I fear, is an escape to a place I cannot return from. There’s no where I want to go, except to go back again.

The rattle from an old air conditioner cools the sweat beading from my head. I'm draped all over the ratty couch with no regard for anything in particular. As sleep approaches, I bask in a feint afterglow that diminishes with every breath. A black clad woman fades into obsidian. She's haltingly removed from view as the all consuming darkness claims her. I fall away, shouting out blessings and apologies. It all seems so hollow, now, those words. I can't grab at them, I cannot cage them. I want to, all those cowardly, stupid, undesirable words. Seconds go by for no good reason, each one of them threading together some kind of life. Each path I draw out in the sand gets blown away by the tumult of a mind in rapture. Worse still, I don't even know if she heard any of them. I don't even know if they were true.

I sit at the periphery watching the decline of those I know and those I merely see. Sitting on another couch, I heard voices. In amongst the doorway, I saw people streaming in and out, panic darting across their faces. A girl with glassed over eyes briefly glanced at me. Her face changed every minute. More faces than anyone could ever have imagined. She didn't say anything. No one ever does. My eyes stare and burn themselves into the other side of those walls and they never say anything. A sudden chill snaps through the room when I walk through, even though the heat from my breath fills the air just the same as everyone else.

Then the pleasantry and hellish reality of another beloved enters my view. The decrepit, the weeping, the gently decaying. She's making the best of it but she can't take it any more. She's seen too much pain behind those grey eyes, too much and too soon. Life wasn't short, it was a painful excursion with ever weakening flashes of solace and comfort. Oh, how I feel for you. If I felt at all, I would. Now that's been farmed way out of here by incomputable combinations of chemicals, smoke and mirrors. It would take me years to count all of the particles in a storm that changed every second, even in the insignificant space between the blink of an eye. We lose sight in that second, we lose so many sights. Add them all together and you have a life thats merely been lived between sheets and dreams.

Fear presents itself at the doorway, restricting my entrance. I want to go back. I plead with him. But the seconds pass by he keeps slinging those arrows into my sides. I see them piercing you too, but I say nothing. Doing so would cleave another immeasurable part between the folds of our shivering bodies and you would never speak to me again. Don't worry, it's fine. In every single scenario, you walk down that marble hallway. You dry your tears. Then you walk away.

When the flags have blown away

And the footprints start to fade

Will I find my way again

Or lose the path before me?

I saw the leaves go brown

I saw them falling down

All my dreams lying on the ground

With nothing to assure me

Threshold - Hollow