A Blank Page

A blank page. A microcosm of infinity. An opaque façade, once flipped, springs a world unknown to life. The unknown world of a life. The secrets- who cares?- very few do. The confessions! One reads them avidly— holding on to threads of thought as one’s eyes scan the letters on the page; the letters of every word lit by the page, their shadows cast in one’s cerebellum, dancing like the shadows of silent spelunkers on a cave wall huddled around a flame— hoping to find in the jumbled brilliance and poetic nature the Consonant, or at the very least an Answer to ease the exquisite pain of living.

Many a confession I’ve read, sometimes my own. Answer and Consonant I’ve found and lost. The only thing that remains is the patience. Patience like a blank page. A microcosm of infinity. Blankness, unending tolerance for ink and bruises. A page as white as snow, made such by the obliviousness of childhood and youth, but a page made intractable by the unrelenting recurrence of trial and tribulation.

A page that often longs to be weightless, to flutter with a gush of wind and dance forgetting the surface from which it came. A page that in illuminating its very words feels guilt at the self-indulgence.

“I’m not ready, I’m not ready…”

His mind flips and turns, shaking the ground in the process. A tyre swing, hanging from a single tree in a meadow, slowing swaying to the western winds. He longs to leave civilization, leave cities and people.

“What if the fraction probability becomes reality, and I get HIV from one of those guys I fucked? Isn’t that worth crumbling in the face of? What if what I have right now is as good as it gets, and leaving this emotional prison means stumbling onto a damp, dark street – however wide and free…I mean…Do I have to believe that better things are in store?

“Oh those sleepless nights when I toss and turn till my back muscles cramp. Senseless imagery and haphazard thought patterns are all that I am capable of. Glimpses of heaven and sharp pangs from hell – thrown into a blender guaranteed to make the worst out of both. No clarity, dwindling faith.”