Atlantis Speak To Me

And he sits down and gathers the noise of silence as he sits. I am not broken, he thinks, and he frowns his serious face, his darkened eyes from the lack of light stare out into the empty space of his living room and he repeats to himself out loud this time, "I am not broken."

He shifts in the ripped leather loveseat breaking the deafening quiet of his empty home, adjusting his stature, he holds his head high, and any man would think him foolish---they’d all say “what a silly thing to do while you’re alone.” And the man knew this, and he swore he could hear what the world was thinking at times; in the alleyway how the child eyed him cautiously, where he wanted to say, “no, please don’t be afraid, I am just an old man.” but his mother was next to him, holding the lad close, he dared not speak, but he did give a small smile.

He remembered the train he took everyday to nowhere, to listen to the city talk about their lives as they went off to jobs and school, he wondered what they all thought of themselves, and he wondered what they thought of him. The empty walls beside him gather his thoughts, he imagines the paint shifting to make space for the lines, and he speaks, quoting a book he imagined he wrote, “I sail, I sail, past the graying lawns of nowhere, to broken places and dirty seas. I envy the mountains that are high up, and I suppose they do as everyone else, they all see me before I see myself. As old as I have become I reckon words don’t mean much anymore, except for the silence in the spaces I know they carry my graying eyes, they carry my broken bones, and in saying so little we rehash old stories with steps and the snapping of fingers and with the blinking of eyes. Farewell old world, farewell gray sea, may we all be remembered by the stars, laugh when I say this too, but I hope the world remembers me.” And the man closed his eyes and the pictures and books from the shelves stood still, and watched the old man die.