Chiaroscuro

The pleasantries have evaporated, and once again I am twelve.

I am sprawled across the bed. My neck is heavy and my back is twisted. I am not ready to sink, so I hold my position.

I feel placeless and formless, like an amoeba.

I see an empty apartment with a broken light. Copper wires protrude out of the ground like tentacles. The light booms in from outside.

Chiaroscuro, that’s what they called it. The contrast between light and dark. My little cell.

Better than this, better than the heat in that stuffy room watching television. Miss Havisham and her cruel mind games a bit close to the bone.

And then the row over the wine. Those sulking eyes. Guilt tripping me about not going to Carryduff. Nothing to say anyway. It is absent, it has floated off somewhere and I cannot get it to return.

Same with them. Looking at the pictures, reading the comments. I have nothing to say. I am not who I was before. I cannot relate. Who are you, why should I bother?

I am not better than you, I am just not one of you.

I want to run off, to Dublin, to Cavan, to Galway. Somewhere else. A little room. Space. Not this echoey house where I hear every step, ever creak, every breath.

I forget every time and then I return and I remember. I remember everything. But I forgave did I not, in the ceremony? I forgave and I returned and we re-bonded. So what is wrong?

It is the absence that is hardest to deal with. The absence of the person I was before, when I was not watching. Now I am watching all the time. Watching and remembering. Remember? It haunts me every day. I remember, I remember.

And it is all back and they are all here. It is all back and they are all here. But I am not. I am floating. I am reading a script. Who are these people?

If she was here. Her skin beside me in the bed. Meditating like a goddess when I returned from the shower. That was real. Or was it? Am I just not making up another narrative?

A labyrinth of webs. I am creating the webs that I am stuck in. I strike out and strike out and only get more tangled. This town is dead for me now. I am no longer here. I was here once, but I am not here anymore.

But the other place, I want to be there even less. The routine, the paper work, the robots, the humdrum endless pointlessness. But what else would I be doing? Where else would I be? Where else can I go?

What would I do if it all vanished again? If the curtain was ripped and the void rose up all around me?

White space, nothingness. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. Back into the simulacrum.

If I saw it again I wouldn’t be lugging this about with me, this heaviness. I am a person in the world! Why can’t I remember, what it felt like to be back? To see the green. To be in that forest.

Why can't I bring it back with me to this place? Why can't I remember that I'm still there, dreaming this all up?