I thought I was dead

when you opened my eyes.

I thought I was a ghost

when you reached out for me.

I thought I was dried up

when you showed me an oasis.

I thought I’d forgotten

when you reminded me.

I thought I was buried

when you showed me how to fly.

I thought I had decayed

when you softened me.

I thought I was at the end

when you showed me the starting line.

there is silence left in your temporary absence

a silence that roars in me

without making even a sound

but I hear it all around me

pressing at my walls

banging at my doors

shouting in whispers

murmuring in earthquakes,

a power field that rings only between my cells

my atoms

between the fibers of my skin

a beat of drums around me

heated, vibrated air

all caused by a red string

entangling both of our souls

I am forever missing

the warmth of your body, the feel of your lips

those arms wrapped around me

holding our home,

but I am now reminded

how it is to last without your voice

the look of your eyes

how it is to have only shreds of your presence,

just glimpses of you

I await you back, my dear

I left a light for you

_ _ _ _ _

and though I might sound melodramatic at times

a real poet

a heart on a careless sleeve,

a tidal wave crushing against the countless shores

of emotions and feels

and yet,

every word is true

every feeling

each sigh

every pulsating heartbeat that speaks of you

The old man realised that he had been an old man for much longer than he had been a young man. He had even been an old man for much longer than most people had been alive…

The wrinkles increased slowly, the eyes clouded slowly, the joints ached slowly… marching onward and worsening over the years. One day he had at last said aloud, “I hope my body doesn't keep aging like this. Soon, I won't be able to see at all.”

The habit of speaking to himself was recent. After passing so many years with not a friend left alive, he had missed the sound of voices too much, and resorted to this.

His lament was brief, and he had brushed it to the back of his mind shortly thereafter and instead chattered to himself about all of the lovely things he had seen in his time. This cheered him up.

It took many more years for him to notice that, after that day, his body really didn't age any further. His sight never diminished again. It was still quite poor, but no worse.

He was so thankful.

If only he could see his friends again, with those eyes. But he did not voice that wish. He knew in his heart that he would see them again, once this rather excessively long life had run its course.

It really was taking quite a while, but he was a patient man. Most old men learn patience, and he was no exception. You had to be patient to interact with younger people, after all, and the older you got the more people were younger than you.

He often told stories to the young people of this town. He did not make any more friends, and the young people would forget about him after meeting once or twice. Or so he thought. But, once a plague hit the town, those very same young people took diligent turns to visit the old man and care for him. The elderly were hit much harder by such things, and he was so very old that no one knew how old he was anymore, and the people worried.

He was warmed by that worry, but also a little saddened by it. He didn't mean to dismiss those young people and assume their interactions to be merely that of storyteller and audience, but he didn't want to be presumptuous either. Every person that had heard one of his stories felt fond of him. Even if they never visited for another story, they all visited now.

He had been getting by on his own for so long now that even the difficult tasks of life had some routine to him now, but he didn't turn down the generosity.

He never fell to the plague.

But everyone else did.

He was used to the gradual call of death that took those around him slowly, but this has been so fast. A matter of months. The old went first, and then the young. There was no time for funerals. No time to mourn one before ten more had succumbed. Holed up in his ancient little house with no doors, it took three days without visitors for him to realise.

What was once a full and bustling town, packed with people who cared for him, now had not a single soul to knock on his door and offer soup.

There was no one left.

The old man took his cane and made his way, painfully, slowly, achingly, out of that house and into the streets. There were so many bodies.

The old man closed his eyes and bowed his head. He knew this was the cycle. He knew those kind, warm, wonderful people would all be back in some form at some point.

But, even knowing that, he couldn't help missing them in the meantime.

He was one lone, old, soul in a town of the dead, and his body was so frail now, but there was no one else to do what needed to be done. He had to bury them.

Many animals were unaffected by the plague, and found themselves without masters, so the old man softly requested their support. A large black ox, sturdy as an oak, assisted in pulling a cart for the bodies. Even with this assistance, he had to lift the people himself. Had to dig the graves himself.

He placed each body solemnly in the cart. The hardest ones were the smallest. They were lighter to lift in the arms, but so much heavier in the heart.

It took a long time.

Seasons changed during this.

Snow was falling now, and the old man felt it in his old bones. He had been moving bodies and cleaning streets for months. He had placed the last person under the earth the day before, and he didn't flinch at the rotten flesh at all. It would all nourish the soil, bring yet more life. He knew this to be correct, yet it was not beautiful.

The old man was trying to light a fire to heat himself with, but the shake in his hands (which never seemed to stop these days) was only worsened by the cold. The flint fell from his hands more times than not. He shuddered. “If only there was a fire…” he whispered, dropping the flint again and rubbing his hands together instead, hoping for some sliver of warmth to come from the friction, but they had already gone numb a long time ago.

And then lightning struck one of the straw huts in the town, on the opposite side of the street.

The old man hobbled over to take a look, but his hands were too numb to hold his cane. He slipped on the snow several times, and each time he lifted his head to stand again he saw a growing orange on that straw house. The fire raged, but didn't spread to any other houses.

The old man finally made it closer just as the roof collapsed in on itself.

“Ah…” he said, falling to his knees again, though intentionally this time. He held out his shivering arms to the blaze. “It’s warm.”

Anachronistic

July 02, 2024

I don’t belong.

Here, I do.

Now, I don’t.

I am out of time everywhere I go.

I look like a model from the Sears catalog, circa 1975. Cotton is my choice for fashion forward. Wedges adorn my feet. A floppy hat atop a sundress completes my ensemble. Comfortable, yes! Appropriate for a job interview? In that, we will have to agree to disagree.

For movies, Film Noir is the end all. None of my friends enjoy black and white thrillers. None want to see anyone smoking. I will concede this point. But the attitude. But the plot. The music of “The Third Man”. “Double Indemnity” with Barbara Stanwyck as a provocative housewife. I want to be a provocative housewife! That is until I watch “Gilda”. Then I want to hair flip as Rita Hayworth all day long.

Only if I had hair like Gilda’s. I have hair like Jan Brady, another soul lost in both the wrong time and wrong place.

But I digress.

With every passing day, I become another day further removed from my friends, my family, and my life. I was born in the wrong century. I should have lived when my grandmother lived, where my grandmother lived. She sojourned on the Gulf Shores of Florida when vacationers along I-75 could take in a water skiing show at one of the many roadside attractions of her youth.

I wish that was of my youth. Not video games. Not social media. Definitely not selfie induced walkers of the I-Phone teenage wasteland. Imagine me water skiing pyramid style with a full coverage swimsuit and a Polaroid camera to prove it. I would have a memoir in the making, a best seller, perhaps an ABC After School Special, maybe even more.

That is what I want, even more. Not more of the same, but more of what I want. Time has swept me aside, but it can return me without notice. When it does, I will be old enough to take advantage of the bounty laid at my feet.

Until then, I am feeling good about this, as confirmed by my mood ring.

The glee I feel when they feel the steel that will steal their zeal.

The blood that flows, the cries that show, and the tears I feel, driven by remorse of the victims premature death.

Nothing excites like a slow and painful death, chopping them, inch by inch.

Chopping them and burying them, is something I do.

Beating them, eating them, leaving them is something I shall do.

No escape for the weak, no fight for the strong, death is sure to come.

No matter the struggle, the final struggle will be thy final breath from your crippling body.

Little they can do as I gut them on the steps, as the blood drips and gathers, falls, and drown all hope and love. Yet to be replaced by hate, that drives me further into my lovely nature.

Love they never shall find, losing thy head, chopped short by a blade, lest they cry as I swing and swipe the deadly despair filled with bloodlust and inhuman hate.

Stabbing, beating, tying, crying, all I do is all I can, with hate, with love, with fear, with men slain.

No room for love, no room for peace, no love for me, no love for you, and a painful death is all I bring, all I am.

Piece by piece I cut them down, by choice I laugh, by choice I cry, by the hand of death I prevail and lose to lust, lust of blood, lust of pain.

No one is safe from a quick death, whether death by sword, knife, or of shell, they shall never find peace nor a burial.

Crossed in my path of despair, and death, death is imminent as death is sure, my hand will begin, my hand shall end, and my hand will torture yet also mend.

Life is long, life is short, lost is life stained by death, forgotten by man won by death given to man taken by death.

Long is death, with despair, sudden end is a false dream quickly forgotten replaced by pain.

The last man, who crossed my path, caught a dagger to his neck, a fork to his eye, and a statistic next to his name.

How the authorities search for the “Inhumane Killer.” This title displeases me yet I see the obvious truth I am a man nonetheless a monster I may be but a man with passions I am.