Grey

I went outside. I needed the breathe the air, to move, to struggle against my own restlessness. But it was not the crisp, clean air I had expected. It was the heavy stale air of a cell. It was thick with decay and unsettled dust. It was my own. I brought it with me. I am my cell.
I walked faster. The colorless world unfolded before me, the uninviting sameness of grey. A ghostly haze washed out every horizon, and I stopped. What direction was I going? Why was I going there? The voices of children reached me, singing songs of colors. We do not share the world, I thought. I sat down, believing their world was wasted on me.

Bird

I held a tiny bird within my cupped hands. It's softness enraptured me. It's tiny heart beat steadily, resting in my protection. I felt that elusive sense of belonging welling inside me. But too soon did it shiver, and its feathers splintered outward as the wings arched. It had tired of me. And after a pinch of the claw and a rustle of wind, it was gone. It did not belong to me. I did not belong to it.

Past

It happened, but I choose to let it go.
I will focus on the path in front of me,
and take one step at a time.
It is all behind me, now.
But this long shadow stretches too far, and is rooted too deep, to be discarded. It is every brick in our foundation, even to the very earth. It is every lesson, learned and unlearned. It harbors only facts, although denied and forgotten. We have brought it with us, all the spoils, and every spoiled scrap of meat. We are all reluctant baggage-handlers. Our past is very much our present.

Truth

We do not seek truth. We know truth already. Our seeking is but the self-indulgence of looking,
the idle pleasure of sight-seeing. But truth lies deep, quiet and dark. It is listening for bubbles
rising from the miles-long seam of the earth along the ocean floor. It is feeling the moon pull the tides
toward her like a lost love. In stillness we will hear truth, for we have brought it with us.

Rest

I have lost the mystery. Not through discovery, but the loss of curiosity.
I have come into peace. Not by finding, but forgetting what I was seeking.
They call me the sage on the mountain. Not for my enlightenment,
But because I climbed, and sat down, for I am so very, very tired.
I have come to rest. For that is all I can do. And all things must.

Gallows

This chain of days is frightening sometimes, how it bends backward and turns inward and straightens out just enough for me to catch sight of the whole spectrum lined up, end to end. I see how it was. I see how it will be. For all the hoping, enduring, and striving, it is but the same death march across the same desert. It is the same wind that obscures the trail in the sand.
And how shall I respond to this repressed revelation? How shall I reconcile my being with the nature of my being?
I am condemned by self-knowledge, and I step up to the gallows with alternating fits of laughter, and then tears.

Droplet

There has always been the steady drip drip dripping echoing through these dark dank tunnels.
Quiet and distant but incessantly consistent enough to bring on the ring ring ringing in my ears.
I sense the dread of some lost soul tortured under its fusilade, maddeningly slow, wearing to the bone.
The screams I already hear are mine, not wanting to wait to know who or why, but which way out.
I run, panting for parched and barren lands.

Puzzle

Cold, the company of words. And we spill our thoughtless musings on the table, clamouring for them in the dark,
reaching for a sharpended edge, a notch, a wedge, hurrying our busy fingers around shapeless fragments, until by
some improbable miracle, a deformed nub fits into its complimentary gap. Half-mad with hope and driven by destiny,
we grasp at pieces of cardboard in the dark.