All Things That Are Good » Fictions

Better as a Shadow

Keith — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:01:54 +0000

Yesterday morning I woke from a dream in which I was looking out the window of my sister’s bedroom in my parents house and a nuclear explosion erupted in the distance, bright burning white light and fantastical mushroom cloud and all. I stood for what seemed like unrealistically too long, watching it and wondering what kind of political turmoil could have caused this and what a shame it’d be that I’d never find out. I turned to the two people with me in the room and shouted that we were going to die. I woke up, earlier than usual, gasping and panicked and waiting probably to completely disintegrate.

Love Letter XLIV

Keith — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:45:56 +0000

I don’t know why you were brought to me. I met you randomly at a party of a friend of a friend. Our quasi-friendship was a complete accident, a series of happy coincidences, if you could call them that.

I don’t know why you wrote me such wonderful letters while I was away, incommunicado. But I liked it. You were the only person I’ve ever had pick me up from the airport that arrived prior to my arrival; you were there, waiting, with cautiously worded love letters written on pink lined journal paper.

I don’t know why you chose me. We were so different. It never could have worked. Could it? Now I don’t know, but I was so certain that it would, against all odds. I thought the fact that you were so different would open me up. In some weird cosmic roundabout way, you were exactly what I was looking for.

I don’t know why you felt the need to leave. If I’d done something drastically objectionable, I certainly wasn’t aware. One day it simply was over and I wasn’t awarded a fair chance or the time to state my case or even to think about what had just happened.

I don’t know why I still feel like I love you, even after all this time.

— January 19, 2010

Anæsthesis

Keith — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:25:18 +0000

It’s only that I notice that I’ve forgotten them when they’re suddenly remembered. They have to reassert themselves, one by one, called back by some unseen or unknown stimulus. Thankfully, they are staggered and don’t return all at once. Sometimes I wonder if they actually die, or rather just lose feeling. Whichever, I can tell that they are disappearing from view.

They do still, however, reassert themselves at the most unexpected times. The times I feel like they should, when it would be appropriate, they don’t. And then, at a time when nothing has anything to do with them, they appear and near-incapacitate. A shock to a long-dead nerve. A movement in a paralyzed limb.

I’m forgetting or have forgotten already the finer details: lines and curves, form and function. Perfection and imperfections. Relative, of course.

I sometimes sit alone and wonder if there will arrive a day when I’m unable to feel anything at all.