Memorabilia adorns his wreck, and shattered thoughts of scattered moments complete each subsequent room. A drawer lies in the remnants here, and no funeral was held over such a corpse; it has remained far too long. Spilling from its insides are infantile clothes, discarded for some relief from reminded pain – his everpresent torment. A child and his sister lived here once, with parents who performed such miracles of care so as to be present, and provide meals, warmth, and comfort. Especially miraculous would it be now for these feats to again be realised within these desolate spaces, yet such would require willing participants; those yet living hold no wish to return and are governed by an aversion to the idea of again residing within this despair ridden monument, with only the ghosts who here roam for any semblance of company.
A corridor creaks; a mouse chortles as she escapes from the family cat, yet this chase only occurs in the fragments of regret; dust has not disturbed any life in its irredeemable claim to all that which still here lies. Footsteps almost fail to appear in the carpet of grey, as if there lies a film, coat and lacquer, over the dominion of such a lost paradise.
Soft torrents howl through the passage, with the fading extremities relieving the post assigned, in the wake of time’s relentless assault. This gentle presence sways and sags a cot, as if fulfilling an automated duty of rocking the babe to sleep. In the wind echoes low tones, ‘Hush now, don’t cry. Sleep deep, dream; and fly.’ By the paneless window squats a decadent four poster bed, though it, too, is under the heavy toll of lacked use. Legs have sunk through hardwood as slowsand; the temperament of the inhabitants seemed rather indisposed to any necessity of renewal. Drapes have hung, and now, torn, serve only as some fading suggestion of splendour, as much a destitution as the world’s fallen beauty to Eden’s, wherein passionate song would flow in
bird call. A bird’s cry resounds outside this condemned building’s kitchen window, and a raven squawks out of view, disturbing this forgotten home’s wanderer from the glimpses of those so close to his heart in lost times, tumbling even as he would rush close to catch assurance. A whiff draws his mind and he drags himself into the fading illumination wherein steamed broccoli and roasted beef would sit, as if calling to any who might smell that warmth and health were delivered upon promises here. Shaking and itching for again that intimacy of his
home, the man’s weight leans through his hands upon the creaking sink’s edge. Heavy is the sigh escapes, quaintly audible in the quiet and cool air, arcing above his frail visage, as day’s glory drips saturation further into the perhaps now worrying horizon.
Closing his eyes, moments come in slow dances around the table, and a hand is raised by him, recalling a melody so often in call and response; whispered ‘Take my hand’, hearing the shattered soul so much to him apparent as he yearns for any hint of ‘my whole heart too’. The table whose surface saw so little of its purpose is scored where ornate seating spent months with the most bare of movement, and some never did enjoy and endure any form of use; their intended occupants were not aged for comfort of a meal in this way.
There, on the shelf by the wall, gazes out at him a faded spine, a plea, echoed in those faded pages, he would make in those moments, lost inside. He reaches to have some grasp of the fleeting, and is cast adrift once more, his composure slipping from his grasp even as he so desperately clutches ink and stain; ‘Read us a story, Papa’. Shooting open, his concentration begs to focus, even as drops blur his vision, on the spectre of her; that torn soul he lacks. She would beckon him depart to the pride and joy even in adoration, borne the same life and loved; the brief caress as bones flutter from his wings’ care to the floor on which he kneels
and comes to collapse as her melody all at once and again crashes into his periphery; in the gaze between the one flesh is a commitment.
A desperation is all that might recall the marvel in that gaze, one maintained while stooping to retrieve the worn and battered atlas in such sorrowed state, in which it echoes reflection into the charcoaled hardwork; always to be laid with a winter’s coat of carpet, yet sits threadbare as if the creatures of minutiae have engorged a feast of each night this spectre of the absent neighbourhood was left. In the cooled embers of the hearth – the hopeful desire of a blossoming yet raw couple’s home – the wanderer, lost as he yet stands in sanctuary of his former soul, seizes his mind from the constant and present memory, breaking renewed contact „von seiner Gequälter mit der Miene“, the glimmer of his first flame; her hair as it ignites in this very light – those waves flowing from their seat of power upon crests of intricate grey – from the comfort of that favourite seat: of hers
to read and capture a glimpse through the hall to the source of the softly lullabied tales conveyed in tender care; of his to adore her radiant figure and astute study. The only moments in which a pause of his measured tone and breathing of spirit to page might ever be welcome involved a timid yet developing voice expressing excitement at a daring and intricate adventure, or her brother’s hushed yet passionate attempt to regain his enthusiastic running in his dreams, and for the new day and its cheer; she could hear him readily fast and asleep, smiling over steamed cocoa and epic of her own. And as if he could hear her joy as a call for his company, and being satisfied that his most affectioned and treasured gifts of this world’s works of God’s care had been cast adrift into empassioned slumber, this contented husband would assure himself of his cherishéd children’s tucked-in warmth, and venture to his soul’s company within that still radiant place.