Forbidden lives

Its life is like an oath, an oath of secrecy taken to protect its most deadly secrets, secrets gathered from a long and not forgotten past. These secrets threaten its existence, with the meanings drawn out from them, what with new codes and statutes. It lives a terrible life, following along a path strewn with bits and pieces of memory twigs, each bearing a  semblance to and a remembrance of a deed once done, a word or words once said; or perhaps all unsaid and not done.

Perhaps such should be the manner of its existence, for its firm grasp on them, and with dogged tenacity it pursues after them. Forbidden memories it calls them, it forbids all tries at knowing it, like a metal door between it and the memories, for they hunt it so. Yet it stays through them, for it cannot get away from them, they are stuck to it like flies on carcass. It’s dead, and the memories buzz over its head.

Having been through so much, yet nothing compared to what still plays through its head, it comes to a conclusion: the most dangerous memory to it is that it ever loved. Love is its death knell. It loved, and the bell rang, and it died. Now it lives in the death of all it thought to live for-love; it lived for love and died for it. Now love hunts it, haunts it like an old abandoned house- it is the house, love is the vengeful ghost.

Oh that it would be filled with nothing, for nothing is better than the memories that stab at his every sense of reason (as if it ever had one), and that perhaps it should even die, for to die were to be more pleasant than to give in to the cries of this hungry spirit- it cries for the blood of its soul, love cries for the blood of its soul, love demands its life. But love is the very one which killed it, so which life does it require? Yet blood alone has the power to appease its craving, and yet it must not give in to the thirst of love; though love cries an hundred years it may cry still.

Now it lives atop a lonely island, shielded with high walls built more to keep itself in, than keep others out, for why go out into that which killed it in the first place? It was a lover, it was killed by those it loved, now it lives with the memory of all it loved and why it died for that it believed. It must never believe such again, much for the safety of it, than for any other reason. Now it dreams of lives long lived, lives long had, lives never to have again, for those lives were killed by that it loved and believed in. Though it would like to make itself believe, that life would turn very slowly, that it might not meet up with the lonely future which awaits it; may it die before time gets there, yet life may spin quickly enough to take it away from those memories- it should sink into deep slumber.

It gets real bizarre, when it thinks of all that has been, surrounded by those it loved, those who loved it, families it had, all these fill its dreams, bursting them at the seams, yet never being full enough- there’s just plenty of memory to dream. It longs for those times, oh it longs for them; when it dreams, it dreams it walks into a room dripping with memories from previous dreams; every room is a dream. When it wakes, it wakes to the harsh realisation that it can never get them back; all have been lost to the thick black shadows of its past. Those it hung on to have left to be joined to others, now it stands alone, watching over its memories.

Chapters; all play out in chapters, from solitude to the bird which flew from reach, to the door which slapped in its face, to the page which finally killed it. Its fault anyway, for it broke its first law: never open the door. The seed came in and killed the tree, now the forest is dead, and the seed still lives. All play out in weary notes, it’s gotten tired of the whole game, yet the game must go on, for that is the system of things, only he must never play again, or he must play according to the meanings drawn from those memories and alter the game. Then must it open the door, and kill whatever comes in, all to the approved depravity of what the game has turned out to be. It believed in it, now it must kill with it.

Like choreography in sync, everything plays according to a system, at last it dies, and this comes to the end of it. If it would ever revisit its past, or leave them buried where they are, it has no idea of the matter. But this it does know, that whatever comes in will die, or whatever comes in will make it die. This is the whole business, and the conclusion of the matter, and at the end, it kills the past. But the past can’t die, for it is already dead, so the past kills it, for the past cannot die. What a miserable existence it is condemned to, yet never has anyone been so glorious, and never will anyone be. This is the whole business and the conclusion of the matter, like a dance, it must play to an end, and it must love. Whatever loves must die. It must die, and all memories with it. And it must never open the door.