Off-Balance Penguin

They were simply sitting there, each on their own bench, completely oblivious to each other.  Two lifetimes of memories faintly lingered behind them like a vague mist in their minds.  One wondering if there was more than this to life, the other wondering what good they had accomplished in theirs.  Two strangers, two thoughts.  The cold was getting deeper as one shivered and the other waited patiently.  Day after day they came here, yet never noticed each other.  Some would say they were permanent fixtures.  Two lifetimes of memories eager to be shared, yet neither glance ever crossed over.  Four generations of families forever disjointed.

 

Then came one day when one of them never showed up again.  Not long after, neither did the other.  And all of a sudden, nothing happened.

 

__________________________

 

 

I stared at the wall.  No further than two inches away from my nose.  There it was.  I stared at the wall.

 

The paint had minuscule pits.  Like the surface of the moon.  Small etchings from the underlying plaster.  Little cracks.  I stared at the wall.

 

Thr wall stood vertically beneath the perfectly horizontal stucko ceiling above me.  But the ceiling was not my friend.  I stared at the wall.

 

A spider crossed my view angle, no further than two inches away from my nose.  There it was.  But it never saw me.  It simply ignored me.  I stared at the wall.

 

The night came and the wall became quite difficult to see.  When I closed my eyes, I couldn't remember what the wall looked like.  When I opened my eyes, I couldn't see what the wall looked like.  I stood there in the dark, confident that the wall was still standing there in front of me.

 

Morning came and the wall had a new water stain created by a drool from the unfaithful ceiling of stucko above.  Be not afraid, my wall.  For I will not falter and abandon you.  The wall stared at me with the mark of a dried tear down its length.

 

You smelled of ten thousand egg and bacon breakfasts, ten thousand chicken soup lunches, and ten thousand roast beef dinners.  But the treacherous kitchen was no more.  You stared at me with the smell of lost purpose.

 

They came to take some other walls away, the ceiling too, then most of the floor.  I held fast to you, no further than two inches away from my nose.  They can take away your kitchen, they can take away your ceiling.  They can take away your floor, but you'll never be without me.  I stared at your silence.

 

I tried to stay.  I tried to hold on.  But my eyes were torn away from you with the sound of a thousand phone books being torn in half.  Your vast emptiness reached out to me, but I could not reach back.  I'm sorry I have failed you.  I was overpowered.  They forced me into a small room.  I stare at a new wall.

 

This new wall, no further than two inches away from my nose, is a colourful and vibrant beige.  It radiates total and unconstrained boredom.  It screams nothingness.  It smelled of the deeply inebriating fragrance of empty shelves in an abandoned pencil warehouse.  If given one of these missing pencils, it could write endless stories of its visitors past, filling the upper left part of a single page.  I stared at the padded wall.

 

I stared at the padded wall, no further than two inches away from my nose.

Head intoxicated.  There's something I shouldn't see, something I shouldn't approach, something I shouldn't do.  If it is my mind which lusts, then why is it my eyes that burn?  My eyelids are useless.  The light still hurts. 

 

Denied.  Deprived.  Your familiar shadow still stands beside me, yet, as a stranger, warns me.  The pain once given to you now echoes back within me.  Because of your past now my future lies in a shambles.  It remains within me to be passed on, and infect the unsuspecting virgin.

 

But it stops here.  Self-inflicted deprivation.  I won't pass on to her the buzzing in my mind that betrays the blood-stained violence that you once bathed in. 

 

Too weak to live your pain alone, you inflicted it upon others.  Your life doesn't seem so miserable when you have the satisfaction that you have made someone else's life a tormented existence.

 

But I won't let you.  If you think you'll continue to live on inside my mind, you've chosen a dwelling of thorns.  Though a great distance separates us, you have chosen to live too intimately with my thoughts. 

 

You will not get passed on into my new life.  You will die when I move on. 

 

The last notes of your symphony's finale drift past the wilted desk lamps and remind me of the spring rain falling in my open mouth as I spread my arms, trying in vain to soar with the birds.  "Too late", said the gnome in the flowerbed, "You've missed the last flight out".  But I tried.  I tried to take you away with me, away from the blood-stained graffiti walls, away from the wet metallic whispers hovering on the street below your bedroom window.  My wounded body can no longer bear the weight of both of us, and I must leave one of us behind.  I tried, I promise you I tried my best.  By the time the next moon rises from the East, you will be so far ahead of me.  I would only slow you down.  Close my eyes in the rain, the same rain that will wash away your memory of me. 

 

When I wake up, an eternity from now, I will look far across the sea from the edge of the world, my dream of peace having laid itself down as far as the eye can see.  I will search for you in those old familiar places.  The graffiti walls will be shrouded in flowery vines, and the gnome at last, will be king of his very own castle.  No  more metallic whispers, only the sound of the waves crashing far below the window of your empty bedroom.

 

You carried on, far beyond what I was capable of.  How much further than me did you make it?  How much more than mine will your personal paradise be?  I'm sorry I disappointed you, letting you down where you thought I would shine.  You shone much brighter than I, brighter than eye could endure.  My wish for paradise is likely unattainable, too ambitious.  I will be granted life, but not love.  I will have your music within me, but I will not have love.

 

I will often wonder if you think of me from time to time, the way I think of you, and if you remember me as your soulmate, he who once completed you.  And yet, a world apart from you, I can only wonder what was your desire, where you chose to live for eternity, and if that wish from your heart was granted to you.  I will wonder, I will...

 

How long have you been standing there?  How did you get here?