What happens when a soul suddenly becomes a guest at its own funeral? I pose the question, knowing it’s best left to those with more limbs, more eyes, more lives to give than I—or perhaps none of either. Maybe it’s a secret known only to existential wanderers, those with ulterior motives and stains of sacrilege on their tongues.
I once knew more of these things—rituals, the dance between bad habits and worse outcomes; where one step leads to another and both spiral into fatality. If I looked at just the right angle, sometimes I’d see those habits staring back—reflected in the abyss like ghosts waiting to be named. This is what’s called being cross-eyed, if you didn’t know.
Perhaps that’s why souls put on skins masquerading as mortals while waiting for the moment to slip away to that other place. Or maybe I’m overthinking it—Felix Unger obsessing over a perfectly starched collar; a trait I inherited living inside a box of riddles—because I was born from one.
I used to write my name with a question mark at the end, just to defy the teachers and their methodical way of breaking us into neat sections; like middle school lunch trays dividing food—a benign exercise of order. And still, I despise the taste of milk.
On the other side of darkness is a caravan lost in dust and miles, driven by gypsies and wearied clowns; the wheels thick with mud, the weight of it all pulling us deeper. Two hundred and fifty miles behind, and we can barely move. And yet, I don’t feel the filth. Instead, I feel the leftovers of regret:
the bottled jams, the forgotten fruits; the steaming warmth of hot coals, the clothes-lines, crosswords and apricot trees; and words too often left unspoken. It felt like yesterday and I just realized yesterday had come and gone. Perhaps it’s just as well or perhaps—this is me rationalizing the things I know I can no longer defend.
I feel the timelessness between my ears, and wish to myself that I had been truer when it still mattered. As it stands, all I see ahead is a tunnel fluctuating in a state of transience.
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Is this where the earth turns its back dragging me down into the pit of its own undoing—a crucifixion without nails, an altar without an offering; a gathering of dust and remorse where the voices of the eschewed fall rotting beneath the weight of their own prayers?
Perhaps this is how the broken make sense of each other; burying their faces in the mud of half-truths, feeding on crumbs from an existence too heavy to swallow all at once. I did tell you: I was learned in matters of ritual. But then—there are interlopers;
with skeptical eyes and fingers locked tight around “proof,” who refuse to blink; shaking their heads as though the words were nothing more than a forgotten fable, a fairy tale told to children who dare not look at the sky for fear it might crack under the weight of their own questions.
It’s a strange thing, this belief in answers; as if their absence could somehow save us from the questions that weigh us down like chains or broken clocks—chasing after revelations on a wheel that never stops spinning.
Still, you’ve come seeking truth as I have; though I’m unsure we’re looking in the same direction. The question never really changes: how did we end up here, gathering at the edge of our own graves—saying things we meant to say long after the moment has slipped away? Was it all a lie, a dream we told ourselves to fend off the emptiness—or were we merely pretending to be mortal, pretending to be real?
Nevertheless, here we are; nameless specters still—hovering in that space between then and now. Is this where souls divided become dust again; querying tea leaves and wiki for clarification while waiting for something more parenthetical—or perhaps, nothing at all?
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Image: ChatGPT Dall-E remixed