silva rerum

One thousand, two hundred and fifty-​two

Groaning, shrug­ging to a trem­u­lous, uncer­tain, unwill­ing
stop.

Footfalls on pave­ment echo, echo in the still­ness of the night air,
Betraying expensively-​kept secrets hitherto unknown,
The jour­ney is well-​trodden, the path well-​known.

He passes by
The feline meet­ing,
Meeting by moon­light, mew­ing with murder,
Murderous intent, the secret
Consulation of famil­i­ars familiar.

He slips past open win­dows,
Melodies obscenely shared,
Hushed con­ver­sa­tions,
Muffled whis­pers,
Silence?

And tonight, but nev­er­more,
One night only,
The foot­falls on the pave­ment one last time.

I took the tube back out of town

It is exceed­ingly dif­fi­cult, I am find­ing, to come up with good, genu­ine char­ac­ters for stor­ies, regard­less of length. I’m not (and assuredly won’t ever be) tal­en­ted enough to merely con­jure entire life­times out of my ima­gin­a­tion (like some sor­cerer à la Prospero) so I am lim­ited to writ­ing about those whom I know. I’m inspired by the people I meet, people I notice from day to day. The woman on the bus whose heart­break is etched across her face, her impend­ing divorce rend­ing her heart so much that her pain is not only emo­tional, but phys­ical. The boy in class who never hisses at the ones sit­ting down a row (and slightly to the left) who con­tinu­ally jab­ber while he is deal­ing with the pres­sure his par­ents have placed upon him to become a med­ical doc­tor. I’m haunted by these people I notice, I see them in my thoughts, my dreams and my nightmares.

I used to blanch inwardly at the men­tion of human phys­ic­al­ity in lit­er­at­ure (def­in­itely as a res­ult of my offen­ded Victorian sens­ib­il­it­ies). That the human exper­i­ence was so phys­ical, so raw, eli­cited a vis­ceral reac­tion of mild fear. Now, it’s one of the things upon which I can’t help but focus – the scent of skin, the brush of hair, the heav­ing sigh. What char­ac­ters wear (or don’t wear) intrigues me.

I fear that I will not do them justice, not at all. I know that in all actu­al­ity, I will never be able to con­vey someone’s story just as it should be done. I will miss out on details. They may be small details or, just by chance, they may be large. I will fail to con­vey the rich­ness and com­plex­ity of someone’s story. And by fail­ing, I do a great injustice, a viol­ent injustice, to someone’s tale. I do not wish that to be so.

O no! it is an ever-​fixed mark

Have you ever wanted someone so much that it hurt – every inch of your body, every fiber of your exist­ence, aches and longs for this per­son? Upon wak­ing up, thought about how badly you need this per­son – how it feels like drown­ing in loneli­ness, suf­foc­at­ing in noth­ing­ness, to not be noticed, not have your feel­ings recip­roc­ated? Hands hov­er­ing nervously over the phone, con­sid­er­ing whether or not to dial and when you do, hanging up at the sound of, “Hello?” Felt your heart soar and per­form cartwheels in the blue skies above as you are acknow­ledged, just as you are? Hearing a song on the radio and all you can think of is whether or not you both would enjoy it? Sitting on the lawn at the end of the day, watch­ing the sun set, think­ing what it would be like if you weren’t alone?

Trying to write is like try­ing to force the entirety of human emo­tion through some­thing so small as the head of a needle. Bernoulli’s equa­tion doesn’t help very much in this case.

And so to be delivered entirely from humanity

He boarded the bus, noti­cing the unbear­able, suf­foc­at­ing heat and the tell­tale stench of people whose bod­ies were unac­cus­tomed to the recent, unex­pec­ted tem­per­at­ures. He strode past the pas­sen­gers seated at the front of the bus who were lazily fan­ning them­selves with whatever objects they could muster – a hat, a book, a piece of paper. One seat was empty in the back, hav­ing been thor­oughly baked by the sun’s rays stream­ing through the dirty win­dow. He took a seat any­way and hoped that a seat was bet­ter than no seat at all. The bus star­ted. Turning expertly around the hair­pin loop, the driver nav­ig­ated the bus through and out the bus loop into the city. And as the bus crossed the bridge, he stared list­lessly out the win­dow, think­ing about noth­ing at all. At that moment, a great sad­ness filled his chest, threat­en­ing to engulf every fiber of his being with a burn­ing des­pair, with over­whelm­ing anguish. He blinked once or twice, still look­ing out at the expanse of blue sky above him, puzzled by this sud­den sor­row. After some con­tem­pla­tion, he understood.