Swordplay.

In a quick flash.
In a second split evenly in half - I begin to recall, to hear voices from a lifetime ago.
When I was young, we had few choices.
As I child, I could sit for hours, staring into open flames.
Astounded by the power, their fluidity.

The way they danced captivated me.
The magnitude of the burning amber, the pace at which it can escalate.
Pupils fixated;
In complete focus with the rhythm of that seductive flicker.
A creative hypnotist is the flame, until it is but embers.
Fierceness can vanish in a instant.

Life drains in an exigent, leaving nothing less than a jet line of smoke behind.
A lingering, weak simmer slowly fades to unadorned ashes.
This. This is exactly what happens to someone's eyes as their world crumbles quickly before them.
That moment when a piece of them - without delay, drops dead.

You know that moment.

Where the atmosphere extracts all feeling in one's legs.
It is in these junctures that your soul detaches from you as a vessel - floats outside of your body.
It is in these fragments that your soul just observes from a distance & saves a lesson for later.

You sort of become versed over time.
Time & time again.
Reliable, not unlike clockwork.
A broken down clock is still right, twice a day.
The more you witness people interpret terrible news, the less likely you are to ever want to break it.
The more you realise, all suffering is the same.

It doesn't care much for who you are.
It doesn't care much for the clothes you're in, what's in your current account.
It doesn't account for how many times you've fallen or for your perfect portrayals.
It is under no obligation to make sense to you.
It does not account for the impurities that lay dormant within you.

Grief does not care if someone actually died.
Grief has silent footsteps.
Grief packs a mighty haymaker & it's full of surprises.
Grief; It's for people, it's for places.
It's for friendships that finish; for relationships that diminish.

It's for the person you always imagined you would turn out to be.
And here you are, standing in the way of control, morphing continually into some sort of stubborn obstacle which constantly gets in the way of forward footsteps.
The journey has to feel the way you want the destination to feel.
I see you're still here, wondering who the hell I am.
In all honesty? In truth?

I'm a fraction away from publishing her.
Gently I blow the settled dust of lost time off the case I so cautiously locked away.
A metaphorical mind vault.
Oh, the bullshit they spit at you about storing your worries away.
I misinterpreted that entirely.
I made a mistake.
Somehow, I tucked away my talent - buried it deep inside my chest.

As if not writing about them would somehow erase my thoughts.
Particles of life piled on piece by piece
Steadily, until I became weighted down more so than I once anticipated.
I disremembered writer's code & just stumbled around for a while.
Now, here I am having a fucking heart attack.
As each day passes exhaustively, I try to find calm conciously.

And, man, I find it in the strangest of places.
Staring down each droplet of rain as it races another along the window. Pain.
I am not an emptier. I can't put something down just to pick something else up.
I don't unlove someone just to love someone else.
These loves pile in my heart, one by one until I can't tell them apart.
A bottomless well of ink in that chest of mine.
And my sword, a bleeding pen, spilling words from my soul.