Its quiet in here. A quiet that fills my ears with a roaring so intense I feel as though I’ll surely be deaf from its static sound. I feel the blood rushing through my veins, pounding behind my eyes. I’m scared. Something is down there. Something is waiting for me. Waiting for the right moment to strike. The right moment to rend both body and mind. What is down there? From where does it come? How long must I fight my fear before sleep overtakes me and I awake with this memory as a half forgotten dream? There must be something there! This can’t be a conjuring of my own mind. I can’t be doing this to myself, can I? I have nothing hidden. I have nothing lurking in the recesses of my mind. Nothing dark. Silent as the absence of sound around me now. Thick and hungry as my pulse. I’m not afraid…of myself?

I want to want no more.

The piece below was written as a quick reaction to a now forgotten poem a professor read in a class I attended. Whatever the words, the imagery it conjured was of me watching my father find his name on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D.C.

The professor picks two poems
The class hears them as he speaks
With one my interest mildly sits
the other raises my level of awareness
while catching me off guard
I’m gone from class and sit in myself
as I was many years ago
My father with that worn Air Force parka and black bandanna
the sign “Another Viet Vet for peace” forgotten at his side
And I see it, I see his name
his whole self reflected in my father’s eyes.

Why couldn’t I save you? Why couldn’t I have helped? What is there left to say? I know. Remember. Remember the gazebo in the park on that perfect day. Fall leaves circling around us. The crisp breeze lifting your hair. And the colors. Oh the colors. Like a landscape painted just for us.

“I love you.”
“I love you to.”
“Will you dance with me?” I asked
“But there’s no music.” You said
“There is always music…you just have to listen…”

I saw him recently at a funeral. He seemed fragile, depleted, sad. Attempting to display a front of calm compassion and support came across as nervous confusion. He looked like a puzzle piece that arrives at the table only to find a more compatible piece has taken its place. I remember speaking with him briefly. I remember overhearing his nearby conversations with relatives. I can’t seem to recall any of the words however. All that comes to mind is thinking “He is shorter than I remember him”.

The heart’s words spoken with a harsh edge. A cruel expression without pity and without the soul of comprehension. A stray set of words let loose without a thought to the impact…

concussion…

wound…

backlash…

The best sermon I have ever seen was not issued from the mouth of a human. It was not spoken in the dusty caverns of the holy houses. It was not chanted by the learned priests in temples far to the east. No simple human voice could reach it’s complexity or awe. The sermon that I saw came from the thunder of the ocean. I had traveled far to see the spectacle of the water that blankets the earth. Many had told me of the change that seeing the ocean and hearing the waves could cause in a person. I was skeptical about this marvel and was therefore unprepared for the impact it would have on me.

I sat rapt watching the waves beat their hymn upon the sandy beach. I became entranced by the hypnotic rhythm of the tidal drums. My will drained away from me and I could not move but to scan the shore and the horizon and to follow the mighty currents flowing endlessly to the beach. All that had been so massive and immense before seemed to dwindle when compared with the vastness of the ocean. It was then that I finally understood the meaning of the word awesome. What more would be revealed to me if I but sat and drank in the movement of the sea?

In what ancient tongue was the ethereal sermon spoken? What was the ocean’s message? Preaching life and eternity it was. Speaking and singing of all that has meaning in this world and the next. Life seemed to be a recurring theme that echoed out of the deeps. Life, a never-ending circle that should be respected by all that participate. This wisdom sank in as I realized its simple truth. If all that lived respected all that lived, pain and strife would diminish and life would flourish.

I listened to the sermon for long hours. The day melted away and was gone as soon as it began, or so it seemed. Every crash of the waves was echoed by the beating of my heart. Those unspoken words rang into me, into me, into me. My soul shook with their utterance.

Somewhere in the dark someone was breathing. Rapid breaths, sharp against the otherwise silent cloak of darkness.

The darkness itself was palpable, seeming to flow like a liquid around objects in the alley. Over the trash strewn about the ground; around the overflowing dumpsters; through the hanging bars of fire escapes long unused; along this cursed corridor of the city. Vision in the nightmare blackness was like seeing the world through the oily smoke of burning corpses. Ink-like in its substance and foul beyond imagining. Something unnatural and not of this world. The darkness always came with It.

He had stopped running some time ago. He was tired. So tired that fear could no longer power through the exhaustion. He could not remember how long he had been running, how many miles he had covered. Through the sprawling city he had moved, quickly and deftly at first, then with increasing urgency and recklessness as his dread increased. It followed relentlessly and the dark was always there behind him. The adrenaline had finally ceased to flow leaving only a cold hole in his stomach, a visceral dread more profound than any known by him before. He had collapsed at last in this wasted crack in the cityscape, drained of strength and terrified.

It was coming. He could sense it through the ever present blanket of filthy blackness, could hear its footsteps hammering the concrete. It was coming and it was singing. A grating, guttural chant-like song in a voice that seemed to bleed the air as it cut through the blackness.

Fourteen and one and six more yet to come
I’m drinking in the fear and the life of twenty one
The night approaches when my blood will run
And all that is and was and might be is undone

The verse repeated over and over, maddening in its connotation and flavor. Tasting of corruption and nothingness, speaking insanity into his fracturing mind. It echoed throughout the alley rebounding off a thousand surfaces to assault him. He tried to cry out but his psyche was breaking apart and the words were lost in another ragged gasp for breath. Footsteps seemed to close in from every direction. They confused his senses and destroyed perception with their incessant marching. Through the dark they played out their rhythm of doom to the accompaniment of the horrific song.

Then there was silence. A quiet so profound as if all the world and beyond awaited the next awful moment. He didn’t dare draw breath. His sight was useless so he fought to focus on the space around him, to reach out and find a way to steal back his freedom. If only he could focus! If only he could pull his mind back together! One more burst of energy, one more superhuman effort would carry him to the others.

The sudden presence at his back was unmistakable. His dread forced a sharp intake of breath, as if to let forth a scream of sheer terror. It never came. Instead gruesome cracking and ripping noises followed by a hungry gurgling and a final, wet impact on the pavement issued from the darkness.

No one was breathing…

Breathe…….breathe…….breathe…….

Open my eyes to what’s missing in the moments.