An eye for an eye until we’re all blind; Justice put her thumb on the scale. No repentance acceptable but death, and who decided? I can do nothing but try and fathom the reasoning of revenge. It feels far beyond my grasp, that atonement too little too late is worth death. We have fallen far, and despite our claims and protestations to the contrary, we cannot laud our good deeds unless we recognize and seek to address our wretched faults. The sins committed are grievous; the wages are beyond price, beyond mortality, beyond belief.
No one knows another’s soul. Not even the eyes, those windows of the soul, can show the depths unknown. We all need forgiveness. But somehow it is not ours to give.
I’ve been dwelling in dark books, good books but not good for lending, books that if I loaned out I’d have to make an apologetic disclaimer about the images trapped in the black and white text by the authors. Images of death, of dead animals, of sickness, of plague, of drowning, of murder and rape and suicide, images I wish I hadn’t seen in my mind’s eye. Images I wish I could put back inside the book and close the cover. It was not my intent; a good book is more than its fragmentary images, but some thoughts linger like retina burns.
Sometimes when I awake in the dark I can feel the physical presence of dreams. While the day is not yet dawned and the cat has not yet come creeping I can almost hear the dream breathing, can feel the shade of its shadow, and feel as it lays me gently down. The warm bed receives my weight and the dream leaves me to find my waking equilibrium.
Sometimes the visions flit quickly, birdlike, the reverie gone and forgotten. Other times the dream strolls away, great lumbering beast of the alternate slumbering world, glancing over its shoulder with a sigh. Not all dreams are kind, not all are benevolent, but thankfully I am not often visited by succubae or cruel and frightening monsters. Most of my dreams are about the things I cannot see, or say, or read. Puzzles I cannot calculate, words I don’t understand.
In my dreams I work hard to read a line of print, and the visions that follow blow wide the blue horizon, flings the sky to the stars, with a sensation of flying headlong into the depths, until the spaces between the stars become filled with the crystalline souls of those who have first atoned and then suffered judgment, the entirety of truth barely visible from the corners of my eyes, I can understand the ephemeral and the eternal, I am weightless and rocketing a hundred thousand miles an hour and then I falter and breathe and settle and slowly open my eyes to see the dull yellow arc of a streetlight shining through the window on the ceiling, and hear a low train song whistling in the night.
The last breath of a dream, exhaled.
No one knows another’s soul. Not even the eyes, those windows of the soul, can show the depths unknown. We all need forgiveness. But somehow it is not ours to give.
I’ve been dwelling in dark books, good books but not good for lending, books that if I loaned out I’d have to make an apologetic disclaimer about the images trapped in the black and white text by the authors. Images of death, of dead animals, of sickness, of plague, of drowning, of murder and rape and suicide, images I wish I hadn’t seen in my mind’s eye. Images I wish I could put back inside the book and close the cover. It was not my intent; a good book is more than its fragmentary images, but some thoughts linger like retina burns.
Sometimes when I awake in the dark I can feel the physical presence of dreams. While the day is not yet dawned and the cat has not yet come creeping I can almost hear the dream breathing, can feel the shade of its shadow, and feel as it lays me gently down. The warm bed receives my weight and the dream leaves me to find my waking equilibrium.
Sometimes the visions flit quickly, birdlike, the reverie gone and forgotten. Other times the dream strolls away, great lumbering beast of the alternate slumbering world, glancing over its shoulder with a sigh. Not all dreams are kind, not all are benevolent, but thankfully I am not often visited by succubae or cruel and frightening monsters. Most of my dreams are about the things I cannot see, or say, or read. Puzzles I cannot calculate, words I don’t understand.
In my dreams I work hard to read a line of print, and the visions that follow blow wide the blue horizon, flings the sky to the stars, with a sensation of flying headlong into the depths, until the spaces between the stars become filled with the crystalline souls of those who have first atoned and then suffered judgment, the entirety of truth barely visible from the corners of my eyes, I can understand the ephemeral and the eternal, I am weightless and rocketing a hundred thousand miles an hour and then I falter and breathe and settle and slowly open my eyes to see the dull yellow arc of a streetlight shining through the window on the ceiling, and hear a low train song whistling in the night.
The last breath of a dream, exhaled.
<< Home