Monday, October 12, 2009

Behind me

Dust has gathered across my skin. No, not dust. Sun-struck dirt or perhaps ash from the nearest volcano. How should I know what reaches into my pores and what makes my sweat smell strange? I’ve been walking so long, only a week in fact, long enough to count off seven days without ever repeating one. The road has that familiar feeling to it, I know it because my body remembers it. I’ve walked it so many times before, but I see none of the familiar landmarks. I know what you’ll say, the volcano’s ash has covered up all that is recognizable to me. That is true, except that I have never seen a volcano around here. Perhaps next week, when the days will have started to repeat themselves. You might have also said that it has been too long since I last dragged my feet across this dusty, dirty, ashen road and that my memory is as dusty, dirty and ashen as the road itself. I could not tell you that you are wrong. Yes why not? It scarcely matters now what I remember, I may forget it all tomorrow, for that is the day when things start anew. Anyway or in any case, I find it funny that the horizon has no end, it never disappears so it can never appear. It is always there. Does it burn beneath the falling star? I don’t see any flames, and yet, the heat and colors of fire gush out of it, coating the sky in sacrificial torment. The star may be rising, but in the way it plunges downward it raises blood upward. Speaking of blood, it is said by voices I have never heard, that I am fleeing towards that horizon, that falling star, or rising star, because, behind me, I have left a trail of blood that seeks vengeance upon me. The voices, in truth, are mine, at least they sound like that. And they have convinced me that behind me is the horror of my shadow, that in that shadow all is fallen, castrated and burnt. It makes me sound like a hoarding, pillaging army of men. But I, as you may have surmised, am but one man.

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