SPLINTERED

SPLINTERED
("Small Black Flowers&;#8230;")

I sit
hugging myself tightly;
focusing
on not letting go,
on not diverting my gaze
from the fractured glass
of the window.
Concentrating, painfully,
on not allowing my sight
to wander,
away from
the torn curtains,
or the splintered
white wooden frame.

Fragments of glass
litter the floor around me
and beyond them,
in the corners ...
I recoil, jolting my attention
back to the pane.
Desperate to focus on,
to concentrate all my will on,
the outside.
On the damp
red brick
of the building opposite:
solid, real, substantial.
defiantly defined
against the washed out sky.

"Small black flowers
that grow in the sky&;#8230;";
thoughts
become echoes,
empty and distracting.
Life is distraction;
I long since gave up
searching for substance.
Searching for meaning
or for mystery;
for friendship
or for love.
Searching for patterns
in the chaotic triviality
of everyday life.

Holding on, crushing myself,
hurting
with the effort
of not letting go.
Sometimes
I see shadows, glimpses
of life.
Patterns that swirl,
never quite substantive.
Baubles that shimmer
fleetingly
as if caught
in lost rays of sunlight.
I hear whispers,
movements of air,
the breath
of unseen visitors; ghosts
of enigmatic people,
who probably
never lived.

Ghosts ..
My attention has wandered
distracted. Shadows &;#8230;
I am gazing towards the shadows.
The illuminated square
of the window, has slipped,
is now only a suggestion
of light, of escape,
in the corner of my vision.
In the corner.
I am staring:
my attention
held hopelessly, rapt:
towards the far corner.
An involuntary rush of fear.
A spasm:
Ice hot needles
tear
through my veins.
A sudden feeling
of disorientation, of
sickness, of
almost exquisite
lightness
that passes too quickly.

My eyes,
stinging with tiredness,
aching with the effort
required of so much
concentration,
so much intensity,
so much
failed
distraction,
grow slowly accustomed
to the gloom.
To the shadow.
To the emptiness
of the distant space.
The corner.
There is nothing there;
a total absence
of substance; a complete lack
of meaningful definition.
My failure is total:
all the crushing,
the pain, the hurt,
the supreme will
required of such concentration,
for nothing.

The room dissolves
around me.
Tears blind me suddenly,
relieving the pressure
momentarily.
I feel
fractured, splintered
and torn. A desperation
wells up inside me.
I snatch frantically,
desperate
to hold onto
something:
some meaning;
some defining pattern,
or justifying purpose.

But in the very act
of snatching,
all patterns dissolve
and meaning is lost.
Baubles
suddenly shatter,
and I'm left
only with empty fragments,
and with blood
trickling slowly
between my fingers
again.
Colliding with myself,
as all hope of finding
pattern or purpose,
meaning
or mystery,
friendship
or love
simply fades
to nothing
again.