It was 3 a.m.
and I was having trouble sleeping
once more.
My mind drifted
and wandered off
with wonder and anxiety;
searching for some kind of reason
between the shadowed crevices
of my brain;
twisting and turning about,
following paths
that sometimes went somewhere;
other times nowhere;
and more times dissolving
into something else altogether
only to repeat the whole cycle once again.
It was a vicious cycle of insomnia.
Kyrie stirred next to me
and woke up.
With the big,
pale blue October moon
shining through our bedroom window,
she lazily looked at me
with her big pale blue eyes
and asked me what was wrong.
I told her the usual:
restless curiosity.
With a sigh
filled with the world’s sadness
and sympathy,
yet quieter than a murmur of a murmur,
Kyrie sat up and got dressed.
I was already sitting up and was dressed.
These bouts of curiosity
always kept me prepared
to go nowhere at all,
but still I was prepared,
just incase
things finally decided
to take a course
and to go off into the beyond…
wherever that may be.
Kyrie returned
and suggested we go for a drive.
I nodded in agreement and she took over
from there. Walking down to the garage,
we hopped into her little two-door
Volkswagen Golf GTI
and s h o t o f f
into the early morning darkness
like a bullet fired from a gun.
At
nearly
ninety
miles
an hour,
she drove
through the
winding streets
of our world,
a world that
was only beginning to realize it was a
new day, as she wove in
and out of
the sparse traffic like a maniacal Formula One driver, leaving
the still groggy commuters
in
– s – t – i – t – c – h – e – s – . –
Turning to the
left, then
into the right, jumping
between
lanes as if her car were the
two legs of an ice skater,
going about in a chaotic synchronization,
taking a w i d e
t
u
r
n
here,
a sharp
t
u
r
n
t h e r e ;
but she seemed to prefer the tight-ones,
those
seemingly
uncontrolled
jerks
that
were
handled
with
nothing
less
than
full,
complete,
and total control.
Sometimes she slowed,
carefully
going
around
a
bend,
only to stomp on the gas,
then
braking
almost
immediately
after,
then firing off again;
fast,
s l o w ,
fast-fast—
s
l
o
w,
braiding a trail that took me to places I have never seen before, let alone thought about existing within our little town, turning onto darkened side roads and barely used countryside lanes; forgotten trails and disused tracks; routes which led off to somewhere, nowhere, something else altogether, coming back around as assuredly as the moon in its orbit, restarting the whole process yet again, echoing the images and experiences before, trying their best to relate to the new and familiar, but ultimately unknown course in its groove.
Eventually we pulled off
and onto a scenic spot
which overlooked the city,
a little alcove
that was able to accommodate
a single vehicle
and held a single, amber light
which hung from a single light post,
the only one for miles around.
The air stood silent as the new day
continued to make its way
towards the horizon,
creeping over the surface
of our pale blue dot of a rock.
Kyrie began to open the moonroof
of her car, slowly revealing the starry sky
above.
The solitary lamp post
shut off in a timely fashion,
even though the sun had yet to rise,
leaving behind the twinkling void
of the cosmos beyond.
I let my eyes take in the sight
of the blinding points of light
which hung above me,
stretching over the curtain of darkness
which always threatened to engulf
our little mote of dust
we happen to call home.
I let my eyes receive their fill of light,
more than their fill,
letting them get washed over
with lumination,
over flowed with fiery glimmers
of the burning helium and hydrogen
of unimaginably distant suns.
Suns, a strange word to call a star,
even though our sun is a star,
a small one at that,
it is still a star,
but when you flip things around
and call the stars suns,
then technically there is no such thing
as NIGHT – it is always the day time;
a sun is always lighting our planet.
During my self-imposed wonder-wander,
Kyrie had gotten out of the car
and was standing near the treeline nearby,
just behind the sole light post,
and was staring at something
on the ground.
I shook the gossamers of thought
from my head
and walked over to where she stood
and stopped next to her.
Down at her feet lay a mangled mess of fur,
flesh,
and delicate bone;
a gnawed off ear,
a broken paw,
a lolling little pink tongue
from a dislodged jaw –
the remains of a cat.
Kyrie, it must be stated,
was an animal lover,
and so was I by proxy,
but in that moment;
in that far off place;
in that early morning silence,
neither of us said a word.
Her hand held mine
and I held hers in return.
She leaned her head against mine
and said something
which only echoed distantly
in the labyrinth of my ear,
yet I could not hear her words.
Everything was becoming
foreign, alien,
lost, found,
lost again, recovered,
uncovered, discovered,
yet all remaining shrouded in mystery
in my mind and understanding.
She kept on talking,
whispering in what seemed to be
a multitude of languages,
and I replied in the off-color
of my only tongue:
the groggy words of insomnia and dreams,
and yet we understood each other,
having both stumbled upon
the dark language
of sorrow and love;
of regret and suffering;
of sympathy and apathy,
all gnarling and winding
throughout our thoughts
and our emotions,
taking root somewhere deep within
and grabbing hold of
who we are,
what we are —
how we are.
There we stood,
in our own universe within a world,
for what passed for an eternity,
but even eternity couldn’t hold off
my attention forever,
and my eyes began to wander about,
scanning, searching,
looking, finding,
losing, distorting,
coming into focus,
a n d d i s a p p e a r i n g
altogether,
the world around us;
around me;
around you,
until the language we spoke ceased to exist
the instant we stopped speaking its words,
because everyone knows
that dark languages,
sacred languages,
rarely survive.
And as my eyes found
what they were looking for,
I turned to face the image
of something in the shadows of the forest.
Kyrie was speaking again
further away than before:
a distant cry from a distant star
from a distant Galaxy,
so far, far away.
My eyes traced an invisible track
to that image among the shadows,
its form coming into being;
into shape,
morphing and changing
until finally settling down into its true self,
revealing to me what it was,
yet remained truly and all encompassingly
unknown.
My mind
raced
and
paced
and
tried looking for the words,
but the words were simply wasted
in the effort,
and so a thought blossomed
in my mind from the seeds of my intrigue:
if the cat was a sight to see,
I told myself,
then Kyrie ought to see what killed the cat.
FIN
A Place for Stories 