it all came tumbling downstairs:
broken glass on broken glass
i couldn’t catch myself and
i too bruised and broke, falling
down between the world as it is
and as it might be
into the darkness
(lit only by my eyelids),
and i saw, when they opened,
that nothing we do is meaningless:
it was not lit (as it might be),
with colors in array
but black white (day? night?)
and a withering darklight grey
i stumbled between scattered statues and boxes
sneezing at the dust,
disturbing the sacred restfulness
of empty chairs and dirty tables,
ends of houses,
pieces of grassy field growing between
(lit only by my eyelids) and i
browsed among these things
thinking only of (me) and
how much there is,
"where did i find this?"
pulling and picking on a desk,
"lucky ol’ photograph, i thought i’d burned you last christmas…"
but the piles just kept going as i
wandered mumbling, “oh the things i’ve loved,
oh the days i’ve seen,”
from below, came a hushsong soft,
the sound of a breeze, dim,
purring as flickering firelight.
i gathered to it, ah, what a divine sight
the golden glow lick at the edges of everything
casting them into its own color
and i stepped close,
wondering how this fire
came to be among these things
so bright and so big and so unlike anything i’d seen…
“where have you been?”
it burned my skin-hairs,
and they bent, recoiling,
“i cannot say” said i, nor could i begin,
speaking as if to a once familiar memory,
“nor can i say…” the fire burned,
and singed my fingertips into
a soft blackness (though i couldn’t feel it…)
i couldn’t help it anymore,
i dropped to my knees,
“what is this,” i cried,
“all of these things?”
“have you wandered so far from me,”
it burned my hands and wrists,
“that you cannot even recognize all
i’ve given freely?”
“these?” i wondered, looking back
over now a golden chasm full
glimmering kingly treasure.
i stammered, “these are yours?”
“are they not yours?”
the flame-voice claimed my arms
and burned up the stumps of my legs…
“how could they be mine?
i barely know them;
they are as distant as time,
these, i once named,
‘my ordinary things’.”
“are you not mine?”
the voice beckoned,
from before or behind?
“how can i be?
you, you are so…
different from me.”
“am I?” the inferno cried.
and i didn’t have an answer,
and died.
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