The Seek of Solitude

A Poem by Luther

I am sat in another’s garden. I possess nothing. I am paying. And I am living. But here I sit, alone, in the world of another.

My home has always been nothing more than my presence.

Four weeks back I sat alone in a bus stop. The bus I desired came and went numerous times. But I stayed. I was alone. With nothing but the engines and the leaves to speak to me. For those seconds. Those beautiful seconds. I had found myself a home. A place I belonged. A placed of beautiful solitude. But another came. And so I sat in our bus stop. And again I had nothing. So I raised and mounted the next bus. The one heading towards my present.

I arrived. I was somewhere new. New to me and myself. This was no more my home than some distant corner of a silent disco. So I turn and flee. I walk home. Money is no issue. I have none. I can get none. Food is no issue. There are plums on trees. Water is no issue. I drink as a bird.

I walk the streets, haunted and icy, through some provincial paradise. A paradise I don’t belong. So I keep walking. The echoes my only friend. The sounds of love and comfort seeping through the post boxes my only nightmare.

I see an old nun with a stick of ice. She leaves the path. She is old and bent. Her eyes speak pain but her lips say joy. She can lie with all but her crystal sight. Her sight of black. I feel a desire. The only desire for another. This is new to me. I long to plunge into her. To take my knife and penetrate. I want her to ooze. To relieve her pain in one distant sigh. So I follow.

She sees me with her ears. Like a bat.

I see her with my eyes. Like an alien.

It is dark so we are free.

I pin her to a wall and force skin deep into her mouth, transluting her screams.

I push and she bites. I ram and she bites. So I remove and hit. She wilts and drops her ice.

I begin to penetrate. Slow and shallow. At first.

But I see red in my faraway eyes and passion grips me in a vice. She is dripping. I am sweating. Both engulfed in a mist of red.

Her eyes look up to mine and roll backwards. I squeeze and push. Deeper and deeper. Harder and harder.

She has been split.

All she can manage is one silent scream to pierce my ears with it shrill calamity. My passion falters for a moment and she flops as my release disperses.

I stand above her bloody corpse. And frame my first smile.

Today I have helped. I have released drudgery and prediction from the cage.

I open her eyes to show the truth. I leave the knife to point the way.

I kiss her hand gently and say a small prayer. After years of pain she is now with him. Her god. Her myth. Her truth, ‘the beautiful fantasy.’

I walk to the wilderness. Where I belong. And seep into the muddy depths to cleanse away my sins. To wash away my memories. To craft my future. My future of no return.

Here I sit in another’s garden. The garden of my bliss. The garden of safety. The garden of him. The garden of the beautiful fantasy.