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Mathias Tella, sixty-four years of age, sat on his bed in the asylum. He had been given sedatives, and he no longer cared of the world around him. His eyes stared into the past that never was. *** Mathias Tella, thirty years of age with the face of a sixty-year-old, sat at his desk. He was a writer, even though he had never written a word. Now he took his quill, took out a parchment, and sat staring at it until a church bell rang outside his tower. He dipped the quill in black ink and hesitated another moment before he pressed the tip of the pen gently against the parchment and drew seven letters. Sireena. The old man licked his lips, then continued writing. Sireena, I still miss you. I suppose this has always been within me, whatever this thing is. It resembles a long, thorny chain of sharpened bones, blood and pieces of the heart still clinging to it. The only difference is that you no longer hold the other end of the chain. I can't believe that it is over, that you are gone. But it is over. You are over. Something has been lost forever. Something, that was maybe a little unreal, even... no, I feel it, I remember it, I can still taste it in my mouth. It was more real than anything else. More real than myself. My thoughts are swirling, I no longer know who I am. All I have left is your name, Sireena. Your name is a part of me - a name I could never possess while I still possessed the thing it signifies. You are gone. I still miss you. I wish I could stop this flow of words, these words that mean things I never had, or maybe did once, so long ago it might as well have been never... Words like love, kiss, hope, dream. These words! They help me forget original meanings and messages, like dreams that help us understand our true feelings. We live most of our lives in dreams because reality is so much colder and emptier than the dreaming. Without dreams, sometimes, it feels as if it would be better to die... and not just die, get up, and walk into a new life, but to die and stay put. That is the worst possible death. Then again, sometimes dreams force you to stay still, and that's when it's the dreams that kill you. I write a poem to forget your face, to force you into non-being, and dream a dream so that I wouldn't have to go on, so that I may wrap myself up in myself and let everything end. But I can't do that, can I? I would never make the decision not to decide, were I awake. And I know in my heart that nothing except I myself is keeping me from waking up. I would wake up. I could wake up at any moment. If your face didn't hold me back. If I didn't chain myself with the image of your face. Sireena. You are my escape route. Your name holds me in my small
death. It stops me from admitting that you ever existed. But you did.
You - still - do. I will awaken soon. I wonder what the world will look like. The man, Mathias Tella, rose from his chair by his desk. The moon was high above the world and shone its bright, blue-white glow into the room. Mathias walked stiff steps to the shelf and took into his hand an empty bottle. He dropped a lead weight into the bottle, rolled the parchment and slid that in as well. He set the cork on tightly, left the room, and started to descend a long, winding stairway down. Once at the bottom floor, he wrapped a black, high-collared wool cloak around his shoulders and stepped out into the cliff rising high above the black sea. He stood quietly for a while, then raised his hand and let the bottle fly through the air. The moonlight reflected off the glass as it flew in an arc above the waters like a jewel dove, beautiful, cold, and dream-like. The bottle splashed into the water far, far below the cliff and sank into the bottomless blackness and loneliness of the sea. Mathias had already turned away. *** Mathias Tella closed his eyes, then opened them. He rose up into a sitting position on the bed and looked for the first time at the other inmates, who were sleeping on the other beds. He looked at his clothes, a cheap and colourness attire. He could smell his own urine. Mathias sighed and shook his head slightly. He looked up towards the high-set, barred window. A bright, round moon shone outside. Outside. |