Scraps of evidence

Oh, the plans. The plans I had. Each of them scrawled on crumpled paper, fol­ded and fol­ded again for good meas­ure and secrecy until they bulged with so much prom­ise and barely repressed youth­ful vigour. Thought­lessly stuffed in care­worn pock­ets patched over sternums and along­side thighs, warm enough to sleep well — all too well — in oblivion.

I never let one go, never let a single scratched line wheedle its way from my vice-like grip. Loaded the bar­rel, then shot through every point with a finely aimed bul­let. Straight into the temple. Clean and pre­cise, mer­ci­less in the assas­sin­a­tion. Murdered in its very moment of gest­a­tion, as blood pumped in ecstasy. From dead ink to dead skin to just so much dead sperm. Held in stasis, bur­ied in ice and dust and fur.

No one can have you now. No one. No one excep­ted. Not even me. Even though I keep find­ing your tattered remains half-eaten in cot­ton corners. Chewed and spat out by so many starving moths, their eyes pop­ping with slav­er­ing greed as they gorged on those feasts of words, shin­ing ideals and crazed mid­night notions until they reeled away, drunken to death with sick­ness and over-indulgence. Eat well then eaten bet­ter, con­sumed by flames. Snuffed out.

The moun­tain grows higher, day by day. I am trapped on land­fill, yet all at sea, cut adrift in my own detritus. I have ceased caring about future gen­er­a­tions, think­ing only of my selfish, embittered self and the state of this yel­low­ing frame in years to come. I’ll paper over the cracks, because it’s what we’re taught, and I have more paper than I could ever need; every word in exist­ence could not sit squarely on these lines, filling out their end­less length. I won’t look back, because my neck will break. I won’t dig down, because I’ll have for­got­ten where I bur­ied the evidence.

I don’t plant flowers or fash­ion a cross. I don’t ask a passing angel to remem­ber you in her pray­ers. There will be no eulogy chis­elled in marble. I prefer to mourn at an unmarked grave.

Comments: 6

    lest the words come back, lest the spiders reappear…
    [ps — brilliance]

    miles away | 04.10.08, 22:24

    Very good. I think one of the greatest strengths of your writ­ing is that you are not afraid to use short sen­tences. And they have so much power. One of my favour­ite, and most ter­ri­fy­ing images in this is ‘I have more paper than I could ever need’. I feel that most days!

    jem | 04.11.08, 10:20

    For some reason, peel­ing, papered-over cracks give me the irres­ist­ible urge to scratch away at the sur­faces, to find the ori­ginal inten­ded beneath.

    Ani | 04.12.08, 11:51

    I love cot­ton corners

    peach | 04.13.08, 10:53

    For one moment I con­sidered chan­ging my name as suggested…“mandatory” then I real­ised, you would no longer mourn at my graveside if I were to have a proper name like that.

    Don’t for­get the flowers.

    NAGA | 04.13.08, 13:22

    Miles Away — Hmm. Spiders are very mis­un­der­stood. I quite like them, really.

    Jem — It’s only in recent years — maybe even months — that I’ve dis­covered the attrac­tion of short sen­tences. I used to be a twenty-a-day huge long sen­tence with mul­tiple com­mas kind of writer. The memory is still traumatic.

    Ani — Me too. I used to be a great one for peel­ing paint. I think I once man­aged to peel paint from a whole chest of draw­ers using little more than my fingernails.

    Peach — Me too.

    Man­dat­ory (erm, I mean NAGA) — I only but cheer­ful flowers on graves. I’m con­trary like that.

    An Unreliable Witness | 04.14.08, 09:32

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