Expressive Explorations

 

I am staring at the embers, of a fire that I didn't sustain. Now it is just a fire I remember, which will never come to life again. When I try hard enough, it almost begins to leap and crackle somehow, to warm all that is around, and light the chasm between then and now. But I am being pulled away, and no longer resisting or trying. I left that fire, when all it needed was a branch, and I could have avoided the dying. So I remain frozen still, with no motive core for my warming will. I have forgotten what I once remembered and I am staring at the sourceless embers.

Whispering no more, silent now. I am stifled and breathless. All time is creeping, to stand still. Prey is poised, absolute zero, I am, stuck and stapled shut. Everything is still, still, for now. In the void, there is no motion.  I am alone and lifeless. Determined cipher, now unknown. With lips sealed, shouting but unheard, I am straining against life, like a net scooped fish for the sea. Maybe a breeze, gently this way comes. I am waiting, breathless but calm, and not quite silent, but whispering. 

I am drifting, in nothingness. All I see are fireglobes; one that I've left behind, shattered, one tomorrow, I'm channelled toward. It is decided now, every fragment, everything I find, and everything I don't, determined this motion. Like blossom that has poisoned its tree, floating serenely, gracefully, down. Towards the earth that is no longer. No longer than that blossom. Subsumed by charcoal ash I drift.

This is desert. The heat drains my energy, until it feels like my soul has been pulled through my crown. When I try to look around, all I feel is my body churning, my head still, as if fixed on a screen. I rub my eyes and they fill with sand. The dunes rise, and lash at my body. I'm simultaneously elevated, to break down in the same scene, and also buried; smothered beneath the weight of sand. This eternal cycle. I rub my eyes and they fill with sand, clarity failing, horizon constraining, I am the water that takes the shape of what is around, and here is shapeless shifting. This is desert. [Inspired by the music of Ben Howard and John Luther Adams]