Chasm

I don't usually post a lot of personal stuff but the last twelve months have been a really weird year for me and this is the most honest thing I've been able to write in a long time. So even though it's about my broken (working?) heart rather than my books I think sharing it might loosen up some of the writer's block that has kept me from any new creations since last June.


There was always a chasm between us, an ocean of distance, an ether of silence and unspoken resistance. Mine as much as yours even if I had never tried so hard to build a bridge, a raft, a word. Anything that could scratch through the surface, that would stop me from flailing and you from running.

But my touch was a shove. Yours was a slither. My words were a scream. Yours were a writhe. Every movement took you further away from me.

Was there ever a moment when you didn't want to go? When --maybe --you wanted to close the gap as much as I did? Or will there ever be enough distance --enough apathy --to satisfy you?

Did I have claws I didn't know about? Were there teeth I didn't see? I would have ripped them off if you had told me where they were. I wouldn't have cared about the blood or the infection that follows. I wouldn't have cared if you had been the one with the claws and teeth. I would have been your prey as readily as I was your huntress.

But you had no taste for me.

I feign no innocence. I have no self-less desires, least of all for you. But tell me you are happy in the ether you live in, your private void of protection. How many faces must you wear to convince yourself that you don't exist?

There is nothing in the abyss.

My words are a slather of mortar, thickening the space between us. Each syllable is another stack of straw just when I thought there was nowhere for the rejection to expand. I have lost more pieces of myself than I thought I had trying to close the chasm. It is an open wound, a gash in my flesh that refuses to be cauterized.

How many masks have I worn, searching like a ravaged child for the cure to this hunger? More than I thought existed and each one I thought was real.

Some deceases have no medicine. Some questions have no answers, no end, only echoes of themselves as they cut deeper and deeper into the silence.

What are words anyways? Sounds we invented so we can pretend that we are not alone, so we can imagine that any of us understand each other. We are all locked in our own ethers, our own private voids, the grotesque ocean of our own masks.

The chasm cannot be breached.