The wounds of the sky pose colors on flagging stars. Church bells ring out like voices. The gold grass lay trapped in locks of snow and litter. Everywhere there is a car or a person or a family or a couple passing towards a question, and everywhere there is the song of the winter's pulse slowing to a drawl, hanging with shivers in the skin.
I try and pick out the pieces that make me feel alive. A dead flower, blooming brown in a see-saw sway. A tomb of jilted homes. Blind windows boarded, doors masked with yellow tape, strangled by barbed-wire, empty liquor bottles squatted on the black yards. A dead tree, crucified on its crossed limbs, nailed by callous crows that wait on either arm - a twisted vessel of caws and stillness.
The remains of the scene wear away, as if the moon was a spotlight, and I was in center-stage. I notice a small circular scab on my leg. I don't remember doing it, but I know what it's from.
. . . to feel alive.
Suddenly, there is a voice on my back:
"How long have you been here?"
I recognize the voice, but stay unsure. I let time make itself known, I wait. Then I say, "Too long."
A breath. "Why don't you leave?"
"I can't. Not yet."
"Why not?"
I know the answer, but I still say, "I don't know."
"Why did you even come back, then?"
"I don't know."
"Sure you do. You always know. You always have an answer."
"Not this time," I lie.
"Liar."
"How long have you been here?" I ask.
"Longer than you. Longer than you will be."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I can't leave. You can."
"Why not?"
"It's not in my hands. It's not up to me."
"Maybe we're in the same boat -"
"No. No, we're not."
I wait again. The voice says nothing. I say, "What makes you think I can leave?"
"You have that choice."
"What if I didn't?"
"You do."
"Why are you here?"
"Why are you here?"
"Because I'm looking for something."
"What are you looking for?"
"Reason."
"Reason is founded by you, not by what is around you. Not by what's here."
"Than tell me what I'm missing?"
"I've already told you. You already know."
"If I do, than it is outside of my power to have it."
"No, it isn't."
"Than why have I felt such despair? Why have I been incapable of seeing any evidence for it?"
"Because you're looking for it outside of yourself, Ben."
"But that's where I'll find it."
"Maybe, maybe not."
"So all the answers are already learned, and I'm just too blind to see them?"
"You are not blind. You have no reason to despair."
I stop speaking. I can feel cool breath on the back of my neck.
A hand rests itself on my shoulders, "It rests on a ledge, it falls when it will."
From the shards of the mountain tops the clouds spread their wings. From the span of the sunrise the world bears its soul - tapestries of slanted shadow knot the city roofs, rising smoke is bleached like angels breath, azure storms drown out the last stars, and the moon stares back at me . . . as if waiting for an answer.
"Visit me again," I say.
But the voice is gone, and for a time, I feel at peace.