Pantomime

You no longer interest me. For a while I was intrigued, I'll admit, but I've come to see that you are shallow and boring. It must have just been something physical, I'll admit it. But it's over. You do not fulfill my needs. I give you so much. You have given me nothing. You only take. True, I have much to give, so very much, but it grows tiresome, being your martyr, your sage and your rock. I am so much more than your mere hero. Having to face your viscous incomprehension every day, with the fool's hope that somehow some light will have pierced the veil -- how weary the very thought makes me. You offer me bobbles, doodads, broken, yet, by your careless hand. I give you the treasures of my soul. Gold for sand. It is enough.

I have no more salt for tears. I have come to the end of myself. Too long, too long. My life is baited waiting, rarely the scent of wet grass, rarely the deep breathing and keen eyesight of summer holidays. I have heard of passion. I have heard of people who refuse to die. I don't know who, or why.

Though I have scourged myself, fasted and kept silent vigil, though I have committed myself to poverty, known retreat, hung my body on faith, yet I am not changed, not transfigured, not transformed. I am still what I am. Yes, I have seen my sunken eyes by sulfur light, called up demons too. I have wept for plague fires, dreamt of famine, prophesied a star called Wormwood. But vision or mirage, I have been unmoved.

My life is measured by the second hand, spoken slowly as a break of a long silence of quite dissatisfactions. I have striven for the length of my endurance, and now I retire to the memory of faded photographs.

All this is your fault. The only thing that sickens me more than you, is me.


J