STATUES ONCE LIVED

There is a distinct aloneness - when you can't remember the last time lips touched your own or the last time you launched yourself at someone, burying your troubles in an embrace. Only a void, empty of everything except the silence of tears falling - tears unheard, even by you.

In this aloneness, there is nothing to contemplate. You try to fill spaces but words unanswered are words devoid of meaning and of purpose. Only lines of discontent form; only brief wisps of former intent floating by, like shallow clouds, hazy and undefined. The tears dry in time; etched rivuletes over the frigid veneer of your face as evidence of their passing.

Emotions at a standstill, this aloneness spreads like a fog, blanketing the once clear waters of being and of believing - rolling in relentlessly, covering the beauty and the wonder of the former yearnings and the wishful musings.

In this aloneness you are still. A statue unmoving, tethered to the concrete, ensnared by the ivy slowly creeping and digging into your stony matter... taking root. Soon you will disappear completely, a shapeless leafy form returned to nature or devoured by nature - no difference really because you - the living thing who became this piece of stone, who forgot the words tenderness and lovingness and 'being with' - you now also misplaced the meaning of hope.

There is no rescuing. You might have temporarily attached some essence to a fleeting stranger passing but he wasn't for the taking. Not your taking anyway because someone else called dibs long before you neared - before the tethering appeared. So in this distinct aloneness you care less. You care as though caring is an imaginary gift rarely bestowed and frequently capricious. Who cares?

You cannot even sense the ivy creeping. You cannot see through hardened eyes or feel when there is no blood pumping and no nerve-endings left for signal-ferrying. No to and fro from skin to brain matter - the skin mere masonry, a construct not of flesh rather another piece of Earth surface.

In this aloneness, you do not realise the passage of time - or the ravage of time. Mirrors reflect no truths, for you heed across from you this young thing, this impetuous 'hair flying in the wind' thing; this sweet - so sweet - young thing rushing head-long, rushing to greet the dawn of wonder and of castle-building.

There is no image of the statue you. There is no mirroring of this disintegration, the crumbling taking place beneath the leafy green façade...