The cost

The car clung to the road like the desperation of love. On the corners it went as close as you could. Straights pulled it forwards with a hungry come on. On a night like this I could see every head lamp for a hundred miles. It was just the road and me and the night.

We ducked down into a hollow where a stream overran the road after summer storms. I braked hard in the corner at the bottom and my back tyres kicked up puffs of stream-bed dust as I screamed away. Bugs danced in the head lights like stars swarming out of infinity. I was moving at warp speed. From time to time I had to squirt the windshield and let the wipers swipe away the mashed bodies of insects.

Down a long straight the gradient let me reach an even ton. I saw the bug zoom out of the night like a tossed stone. It’s arc smashed it against the window - a juicy crack and its juices quivered in pulsing veins as the slipstream dragged it up the windscreen.

Grasp

My fist closes on the eye’s horizon
And comes back empty
What we see is always out of reach
A blink capturing no more
Than a moment’s darkness

24 – You’re at confession, so confess the unspeakable.

What does it mean to confess? Is a confession to tell that which no other knows? If so, then for those who live alone, to tell of most things is a confession. The lonely live their quiet private lives behind the windows and walls, separated from the rest of the world. Untold hours can pass in the hissing silences, alone with their actions and thoughts. They walk the streets like ghosts, peering into the public lives of others as into the warmth of a family home from the dark infinify of night. Unseen, seeing, separate and separated.

So the unspeakable is that feeling that cannot be shared because it is destroyed by the act of sharing. To articulate loneliness is to have faith that you are not alone.