Canyon
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My wandering feet thread the hems of these depressive slopes. It is strange territory for me. For one who lapses into pleasant thoughts at will, and conjures burning schemes and visions. One given to words that drown out the most threatening imaginations. One born with rose-coloured eyes.
Where did my joy go?
My wandering mind lingers, too long, on too much at a time. Not many things matter. I am used to the silence now. I breathe in it, I breathe it in. It wraps around me — suffocating, snuffing out meaning from everything. Up and down I walk, a thing in a trap. The door is there, open; the windows are there hung; but what kind of door lets out one trapped in his own misery, and what sort of window brings light into his endless gloom.
I recall a task once set by a friend — a writer too, of other things.
“Write about how it feels to have everything and have nothing at all,” she said.
Quick to task, I wrote of sadness hinged to meaning.
“You don’t understand it,” she said. “With these things, there may be no reason.”
It didn’t register on a mind free of clutter, alive to the world and busied away from looking into the yawning depth of his mind, that often, grief begs no meaning.
Now, scarily so, my friend’s words ring louder.
Hope appears to have lost meaning. Food, once revered, now serves only to keep alive. Taste is gone. Where? I don’t know. Possessions, like a necklace forged from ship anchors pull me deep beyond forgotten trenches; taking me to a place I don’t know, but a place I know I don’t want to go. Disinterest has greyed my rainbows. The sun has hidden its eyes, and life is slowly dusking; dusking grey.
Just today I met a woman, 100 years young and alive. Her eyes glowed with some of those things my eyes had lost. Her hair ran back in perfect silvers, curling forward at the tips, embracing her gaudy necklace intimately. She was talking about style and fashion; age and passion.
“I hope the man upstairs gives me some more time,” she said. “There is so much more that I have to give.”
Her smile lit my soul, with flickers that soon died out. Her story bridged the gap; her eyes reminded me that eyes were made to look more upon…
