a whimsical look at the mailing list…
shine. shrine. pine. reflection of a reflection of a reflection, droplets from the ceiling into the abyss, into the secret well, a place, lost in a cave, forgotten except for fleeting snatches of dreams.
phosphor limes the walls, and strange creatures chitter in tunnels i have not yet walked. the echoes of their voices called me here, but the dust over the surface of all has kept me.
there is a glo-worm, there, on the lip of the abyss… see him? he slowly, carefully pushes a pearl along the edge. he does not glow, but it does, or is it that they both do, reflections of one another? would he be that lustrous orb? or is it she? and the pearl, a seed, an egg?
uncertain and ignorant, i look away. such careful work is not for me. neither glowing nor pearl nor careful worm. just meat. animated sinew, lost in a cave, trying to spin starlight from dust.
i write my name in the clumpy motes, they stick to my fingertips and curl into lint. i roll it between my clumsy fingers and think of making silk from it. long thoughts. entish syllables starting in my toes and it may be eons before they make themselves more than a resonance no one else yet feels.
sister, sister, wisht i kissed her. can there be here, fear? yes. no. neither. both. the shades hiss and curl into one another, there, in some distance somewhere. maybe behind me. maybe. i do not look. the breeze wafts from the ceiling and the dust stirs and i see the mark that might be your footprint except it is shaped like a splat, like lightening, like a
shock that has only burned clear one moment, one space, now.i sometimes hear voices, more than echoes. i see there is wax on the floor. crimson. amber. white. green. splotches of old rituals, or maybe just evidence of passage. the rim of the abyss is coated in places. i wonder… if i lean in, if i listen, what might i hear there, in the great, deep, forever?
for all the library and what whispers have passed since i found this place, you are the first to say hello, the first to blink at me. maybe the others are sanguine, jaded, or just tired. maybe, pushing their pearls, they cannot look.
or maybe they watch and smile, like geriatrics at halloween, all ‘i remember when’ and nostalgic for the moments when connection and exploration and discovery were fresh and heady and the candle easily burned at both ends.
or maybe we’re just not close enough to the edge yet.