(Untitled)

[fractal_reality]

Sometimes I can't tell if you're my anchor or what lets me go. Sometimes I can't even tell if you're real or not, if I only made you up in my head. Your face gets blurry in my mind, and I only see you in dreams.

Sometimes I wish you would just let me go, and others I wonder if you're why I'm still going.

Comments

Ah, sweet constancy

[anonymous]

At these times when you endeavour to make clear that face and give it substance. As now, just before you close your eyes and move closer to oblivion. Fleetingly to find some semblance or outline. There! A profile of your beloved on the horizon - between here and sleep. An image from some other time. During some disagreement when they drew hard on their cigarette and drew away from your intent glare. How could you ever have forgotten this! You cannot stand to ever lose this image again. So you feebly search for a proxy to conjure up that moment at will - some meagre associative symbol. You keep your eyes closed and fumble about the floor beside your bed. Your fingers find your ever-present packet of cigarettes. Withdrawing a single stick you light it without rupturing the image. The metamorphosis begins and the face begins to fade. Urgently, you draw back and fill your belly with the sweet Virginian vapour. Gently you open your eyes to the darkened room. There exists only the peeling ember afloat on the black. As you exhale and focus your eyes on this volcanic point you resolve this to be your proxy. That each time you stare at the folding glow of your diminishing cigarette, you will remember the sacrificial image - that profile of your beloved. For the whole cycle of the next inhalation and exhalation you are completely satisfied. For you are impotently assured the image will be there at your beck-and-call. To be given self-imposed constancy. Reserving it a place amid the catalogue of our Collective Unconscious. A repository of greater stores than your limited memory.

Next you find yourself laughing aloud. As you entertain the thought of the glowing ember scissor-held at your finger tips being the modern day Olympic torch. Relayed across the world for centuries past and yet to come. Somebody will always bear it. You cannot envision a time when there will not be at least one person drawing back and pulling the burning ball closer to their lips. You laugh again. You notice the poor unwitting soul who is filling their lungs, looks down at the glowing point and a mysterious image enters their mind. A face in profile, looking off toward a far off place. Then they wonder "do I know this face? I'm sure I've seen it before. Is this a glimpse of my destiny or another of those conglomerate faces who populate my dreams?".

You roll over, smile, close your eyes and move closer to oblivion.