The pieces lay around me. The clock ticks away the seconds. Lights pass on the street sending shadows darting across the walls. An open book, a note page and scratched lists and columns: pros and cons. This or that. Now or later? Now or never. No or …. no… or, well no. crumpled Kleenex and a clear plastic wrapper. Were there tears or was it more practical?
Papers here. Papers there. Piles of future things. Ideas and not quite yets. Keys to a place that is not mine. Next to a key ring yet to unlock anything of mine. and no prospects of doing so. My I.D. so I am not confused with whom? An envelope marked “confidential” in beautiful feminine script, but not mine… my handwriting is more like a bastard born of both my parents’ … like me I guess. Is there irony in that. ? . And a dirty bowl. Remnants of a meal long ago eaten, savored… and even longer ago concocted.
A book of correspondence. Between two passionately connected characters, but the validity, the existence of one is always in question and the sanity of the other is dubious. Yet there are glimpses into my reality that through into sharp contrast the letters I have written, not sent or otherwise, received, and longed for.
“like Ariadne holding the string for Perseus while he enters the Minotaur’s labyrinth, your words might keep me from going astray.”
Wallet open, sadly no money worth mentioning resides within. Only records of money already spend, dreams already spent. The darkness creeps. And the truth is it hasn’t changed that much since I moved in, but I have. The pieces lay around me.
Do you think it is possible to measure a life… weigh a life? Are the relics of a life half lived enough to do that calculation?.. If not then what else is there to evaluate? A half made bed still warm, half drawn curtains. Half made decisions. Half light, half loved, half sure. Half-time and great desire for refreshments. Ice cream and popcorn all around… or just to feel refreshed… to feel fresh and not like Perseus in a maze, without the string. Without Ariadne. The pieces lay around me. Had I not seen them before. Had I seen and ignored. Are they even there now, as I lie amongst them? Am I the potentially nonexistent character in some book of correspondence? Am I the other equally questionable fellow with questionable sanity?
The last part is certain. For I lie amongst relics of something dead. Or dying. Or even worse something that may never have been at all.
How is any of that measured.
It is not.
Not by me.
Not by anyone. Not now not never… notever.
but the pieces lay beside me.
*they lay themselves down, as if of their own volition and no active will of my own. They lay themselves down.
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