Fragments of a Shattered Soul

I will examine all the fragments that I have gathered on these pages; each acting in the theatre of nostalgia or remorse. I will hold each portion under my internal microscope and distinguish the details of their frozen scenes. I can see that some are aged and some new-born. A few are worn and weary whilst some leave scriptures on my skin, and write sequels in the scars they sketch afresh. I have written an abundance of heartache in each shade I’d claim to know, but that’s a pebble to the moon in retrospect. No matter how I try though, these pages won’t sit flush and they seem to be re-written over time. So my story will stay shattered and scattered about the lawn like so many Autumn leaves; and I shall lie among this library rebellion with whoever allows their fluttering.

I adore the perfume of books; it forms another story parallel to the written one. Old books well cared for smell sweet, a little dusty and of something almost indescribable. Each person would use something unique in an attempt to bottle it; sandal wood warmed by the afternoon sun, a touch of salted caramel, pencil shavings, perhaps a hint of sand. A book ages like most things; it starts out stark, new and a little sharp; fading and softening into something comfortable over time. Everything it touches is an influence, every page turned traps a new layer. I love a story more when I can smell the life its lived as your honey-smoked voice brushes the words into my skin.

This existence is so intricate that we can never truly determine the line that separates us from another, or from the world we may only imagine. The details so indeterminate that we can’t prove that what we experience is anything like another ever will. The unfathomably large bowl of assorted sugary treats that would taste different to each tongue they pass across; a tireless journey through red hillocks to find that it has no one place. Trying to explain that feeling where acid fills your chest and dissolves your lungs and makes your breathing so shallow you can’t whisper, is invariably impossible because it's only an allegory of a reality that your mind has created. How could I ever know I was loved when my understanding of it may be vastly dissimilar to those who claim to feel it.

Emotion is myriad of hues spinning rapidly before me. As the colours shatter in psychedelic shards across my vision I can pick a few from the fray. If I could piece the mosaic back to one flush sheet, I’d see that there are far more colours than words could detail. Is it red or crimson-cherry or a hint more burning orange? Just as anger may be rage or uncontained frustration; green can be both tepid and lukewarm. The difficulty is separating the sorrow of the blue arctic ice from the despair of the depths far below it. It is even harder still when you try to explain this someone who has only seen the ocean from the sky.

There is something humbling about the sea. It is vast beyond our sight to the horizon, where we watch it birth the sun as it eats the sand at our feet. It has depths so great as to swallow cities but we forget because it spits up little shells to decorate its edge and whilst we sit here making castles with our toes buried deep, we are crusted in a salt that’s seen the world. So when you ask me why I come here and cast shadows on the dunes, I will stare into the grey distance until you know I am at peace. After time even a cliff will give way to the ocean just to join you on the shore.

Where do you see this going? This endlessness, this running without breath. It will all be ok if we keep going at the same pace, feet kicking up dust and sending clouds into the sky for us to stare at when we need to stop a while. But where are we going? Should I ask or just run right to the end with you, to the beyond - and fall when it’s too late to care, or to notice.

We can wake and rise before the sun and sip with our tea under a blanket thrown onto the lawn. Our clothes would get a little damp with dew that waited too long to drip, but we wouldn’t care; the goose bumps add texture to our souls that tend to seek some kind of rise from whatever or wherever a place they dwelled before. Like brushing off the dust of the lives we may once have lived, we will seek a little pleasure from those things; any little warmth that can flush the skin but that a slight breeze would deter. That tiny chill a whispered reminder of where we would rather be.

Standing here on the edge of it all, a precipice to tip one way or fall and I’m pushing back against air to save us but it’s dark and I have lost sight of where it all begins. We all have slashes, dripping a myriad of colours but we don’t know if it’s dangerous because we’ve all become so numb. And we pray to shit we don’t believe in for things we know ii never happen because nothing makes us feel enough to think. Whilst we sway our way through midnight we can hold each other tight and love the bruises because they tell us we are real and if all else fails we can drink until something brings the light back into our world.

This life is like oblivion; replace that darkness with a monotony that we try fervently to escape, every day we win by fragments within life's smaller pleasures. We suffocate on the inevitable grinding of cyclic to-and-froing. We don’t know why we’re here; just trees encased in concrete confines to create a prettier pathway. The euphoric happiness is built up from some hope it might get better comes crashing away; snake-skin shedding so we have to build a new resistance to the world. Why the fuck do we try so hard for so many unfathomable expectations. That mould was created by someone long forgotten, so why do we all try to fit? None of us are cookie-cutter outlines pushing against the tide of heat to grow into our own free shape but we all get trimmed back, frosted and boxed to fill the shelving. Will we defeat inevitability, even if it leads to isolation; or is that trap too sickly sweet to pull ourselves out?