Kraken

A single echo resonates through the canyons of my memories like a slow-motion cloud of thick debris - a latter day angel of death lurching through gray still-life Manhattan streets - a beast, marked with a six. I grasp at these echoes, these memories... dry memories of you, as a dying old man sifts through faded black and white photographs – still images of long-dead faces. Beautiful moments frozen in time, Pompeii statues on the verge of dust, perpetually re-enacted for a one-man audience to see. However, as the days, years, and decades slip by; as actors forget their lines, stages fall apart, and paint peels away - so does the performance transform into a perverted hollow mockery of itself.

Thus is the story of my love. Thus is the fate of joy.

I call out to you again and again and again and my voice grows hoarse. I just don’t know how much longer I can sustain. It’s so cold. And my lifeboat is cruelly tossed about the reckless waves. However, if I pause and listen carefully, above the perpetual torrent of cascading rains, I can hear it… the tremendous rumble, the ragged breathing, of the beast that lives beneath. I hear him stirring - after several millennia, he has awakened from his fitful sleep.

“ And if I said I want you back I’d be a liar.
There’s nothing left of us to long for anymore.
But inside the ashes burn in endless fire.
And I can’t help reaching out forever more.”