There is a stone in my hand. Twigs and dirt in my mouth. My knees are bruised, my legs strained. The prevalence of dry sensations. My skin is smeared with crystallized droplets of petrified sweat and blood. The pain makes me smile a little easier. Here I lie, motionless. The morning dew clouds my view, entagled in a strange dance of bright haze. In the midst a man much like me, much of me, a reflection yet more so. He rejects to note the thin veil of my staggering hubris. My petty woe is met with oversight, and rightly so. Words are extinct and thoughts shall follow. Presence within and beyond presence. Where there was once defiance in my eyes, a strange dead calm now resides, and takes precedence. Whether it is serenity, surrender or stagnation, I cannot tell.
There is a stone in my hand. A hard form for a seemingly hard man, soft in all the wrong places. In all the finest places. You could spend a lifetime looking for the openings, but here their appearance relies on happenstance. This anger stems from such bizarre qualities it's easily misunderstood as indifference, arrogance even, rarely leading curiosity to anywhere but further away. But there you have it, there you have this man-like figure. A jester of absolute truths in a deceptively unambiguous guise, nailed by his feet at a crossroads, issuing another ponderous and futile attempt at guiding you forward with words perceived as misleading. This unfathomably upfront figure before you can be no more than clever deception of course, thus your rapport must remain one of mutual caution. His form is cracked and misaligned in vulnerable places, giving apt opportunities for exploitation. Perhaps, then, it is equally plausable to assume he is apt at expoiting vulnerabilities found in others. Untrue, yet unsurprisingly an effortless leap of faith. Still, the jester he is and remains, easily invaded. By the good-hearted or the ill-willed - it makes no difference. The tissue is exposed and begs to be punctured.
There is a stone in my hand. Held high and ready to strike. Trying desperately to keep in line with two ferocious eyes darting across the room, evermore surrounded by foreboding shadows. What they hide, one never knows. Best to keep wary. Best to relinquish trust and extinguish love. Best to grip a final means of protection with white knuckles and bleeding palms until the fingers rot off and contentment can be found in failing to defend for one's self. Release through absolute forfeit. A subtle compromise between warring instincts for one so quick to flare and so easily burnt to ice. One who knows not when temperance is the key, regardless of whether the impulses it would tame were tender or malignant. One who dreads of being misconstrued, yet stands in its face daily.
There is a stone in my hand. Pressed hard against my chest, offering a cold casket for a raging heart in exile. Drowning out the beautiful noise to give way for the choking hands of silence to do their work. It was an obstacle buried in the dust, yet high enough to stumble upon. A petrified tongue for a mouth of quicksand. Its accompaniment a nagging voice sticking to the air, reminding me of overlooked foresight and how the leap before the look left its mark yet again. The humble pair of eyes wide and heart beating could never lead one through this terrain unscathed. A small rub nonetheless, one that will eventually disappear into the bowels of the earth should I find the strength to release it from my grip. I can allow myself to believe in that much at least.
There is a stone in my hand. A swell of rage that makes me question the purity of each passing moment. A sliver of a shiver, sending a chill through my chest in the face of any kind of release or absolution. Release from the clutches of a burning heart and a fickle mind; absolution from the liquid fire that fills me as the breaking dawn exposes all the gnawed bones you've hidden in the darkness. I crave for both and desire neither from hour to pulsating hour, stagnant and stable in the fading mirror as my face becomes smoke and my name an echo. Remembrance lies cracked upon a broken altar strangled by overgrowth, a moribund god-head of yesterday and yesteryear. L'homme que j'étais, je ne le suis plus.
There is a stone in my hand. My hand is stone.
