SECOND SIGHT

Her fingers cast shadow branches across the wooden floor, as she held them to the light.

Sunspots marred her vision. From the ground she heard whispers: ‘Is it him?’

She convulsed violently on the floor, shaking her way out of poverty’s iron grip.

Their grief was palpable, hungry, and blind.

They clucked in anticipation as she sprung bolt upright, head back, eyes rolling.  She bellowed, in the deepest voice she could muster, ‘Yes, darling it is me’.

Dust fell from her like glitter in the sunlight.

She heaved and sweated and sucked all the air right out of the room, feverish in her deception.

Desperation turns us all into whores.

She heard someone fall to their knees and then a sharp snap as a coin purse opened. ‘There is no guilt to this duplicity’ she thought, as a tiny glint of hope reappeared in two eyes made of sorrow.  

THE PERIPHERY OF LIGHT

 We move through dense clouds

Of misty doubt and dewy emotion.

Unguent viscous rain drips raw feeling into our eyes

As we search for that break,

That flash of light.

One day you wake up right out of a cold reverie

And you realise,

No one ever looks at me anymore,

No one ever looks at anyone anymore.

Stone cold feelings, like you’ve lost.

The loss of nothing

The loss of everything.

One day, you wake up and think:

‘No this isn’t right’

Life knocked you off your feet,

Kicked you when you were down.

But, one day, you wake up and…

BOOM!

There’s that break in the clouds.

That golden beam of hope

Just pushing through the thick heavy dullness.

Suddenly it’s worth it.

It’s worth all the darkness

The doubt

The fear

The pain

It’s worth it all

Because that one beam of sunlight

Is breathing life into everything it touches.

Then you realise that no one was looking at you

Because no one could see you

You were clothed in grey and shadow.

So you get up and you dust yourself off

And you shake the cobwebs from your battered skull

And you step up

And you step out

And you step into the light.

And now you are clothed in gold

Wings stretched out for flight

Like Icarus, daring the sun to melt your wings.

All the while knowing that unlike Icarus,

Your time in the gloom means the light will never take you.

It will merely surround you, and carry you, should you decide to let it.

You’ve learned not to fly too close,

Just to skim the edges,

To graze the periphery

And to fly

Fly, fly fly.