written and posted by members of Lancashire Dead Good Poets' Society

Thursday 17 October 2013

Paper

08:30:00 Posted by Damp incendiary device , , , , , , , , , 2 comments
Eventually, you start closing doors. 

It seems that all your life you wanted windows and open vistas.  You wanted to visit every country, talk every language, kiss every frog.  But saturation comes hard on the heels of the flood. 

Eventually, you draw the curtains.

Two hundred television channels scream obscenities, distract with a vacuity you crave.  Somewhere, you insist, somewhere amongst the self-assured voices exists a nugget of existential enlightenment.  An answer and a question.

Eventually, you flip the switch.

In the dark, LEDs flicker.  Something is waiting, the blinking lights tell you, someone has spoken.  And you reach for a button and you answer and then you wait.

Eventually, you pause.

There's a sound beneath the gnashing, tapping, humming, screeching, sighing web.  It's a whisper, like flesh on paper.  It's the sound of breath held.  It's fingernails nibbled and hot drinks quietly sipped.  It's a biscuit flopping into a mug and the Taoist indifference to its loss.

Eventually, you return to the page.

And the page welcomes you home, prodigal child, as if you'd never been away.


2 comments:

Colin Daives said...

I found this very moving.

Thank you

Ashley Lister said...

Like Colin, I also found this very moving.