Faded Truths

Faded Truths Plain truths —

when spoken like the weather forecast,

or the lunch menu recited without feeling —

are hard to digest. They do not taste like food,

but like fossils of some vanished giant —

dry, unyielding, immune to the teeth of thought.

They stick in the throat —

stubborn, airless, resisting passage.

They enter the body slowly, unwillingly,

as if forced into a host that only wishes to be rid of them.

But once swallowed, everything changes.

Anger, fever, argument —

and wagers with deaf old myths —

each must be faced in its own time and tongue.

Gradually, the system begins to shift.

The horizon of time contracts —

it feels dreadful at first, but really,

who wishes to stretch a mediocre party longer than it deserves?

If your idols are now feasts for worms,

if your most passionate prayers sound meaningless to your tired,

confused neighbors,

if love has become just another word for tailoring life’s fabric into an elegant, itchy discomfort —

And if your work reeks of futile, mechanical repetition —

then why cling?

Know this: the world of the sick and fading creature is no longer an idea or a dream —

it is your home now. You can adorn it however you please —

its sluggish ugliness, its panting beauty, its fragile tenderness —

all are yours. Show them to the world,

or hide them within.

You no longer need to imagine or read what it is to live with death as your busy companion,

checking its watch in the elevator to your flat.

It has you on its list —

but hasn’t arrived just yet. Crack open the egg of fear.

Sprinkle it with salt, and fry it in butter the color of afternoon sunlight.

Taste its warmth on your tongue —

a bird that never was, yet feeds you enough to begin writing again,

as only your mind and fingers know how.

Think of the coffee beside you now —

remember when it was a steaming mystery,

reserved for the tall ones, their faces orbiting urgent tasks,

too distracted to play the game that once stretched across the whole field of your heart. Now it is yours —

like your diagnosis. The first sip will be hot and loud,

the second will refresh you,

the third will thrill your nerves with its dark kiss. Your life has changed —

shrunk, yet still fits. Everything else may belong to others, but this —

this is yours alone. Damaged, incomplete, riddled with flaws —

yet unique as an eye’s reflection.

Still hungry for impatient light,

still able to translate it into electric symphonies your damp gray skull-sponge smiles to receive —

a galaxy of images no other eye can see. Not blind yet, nor numb —

not yet.

See yourself — seeing.