Archaeology

Do you ever feel the void spiral in around your heart?
The formless gray, like wet ashes, consume your soul
"Where DID my desire go? What happened to my verve? Am I beyond all hope?"

You often have to wonder if your imagination is a sulking child king...
"You didn't play with me today!"
"But your highness, I have a job, they don't let me dream, you know I would dream if I only..."
"No more excuses! I'm leaving you."
And suddenly you feel sick.

I know how the sky looks to your sick eyes
I've been there to, lost and unfortunately still with sight, to see how hollow the world is without your king.

The clouds pounce down in large cirrus streaks trying to pull you into the hollow, the blue void. It wants to embrace you.

All you can do is sweat and hope that this is a Stanley Kubrick film, because you already taste death in the wind. Can you cry? You better...it might untie your stomach from the knots it feels.

I sat in a hot messy room with old comforters thrown over the windows inviting me to jump, not to die, but to fly, to do something in order to bring the child king back.

I kept hearing music and softball practice and traffic on the road. The world threatened to crash violently on my head. Somewhere a jet plane flew to where I wanted to be.

So I ripped away the blankets and kicked out the screens. They fell with slow-motion delight. The wind picked up my hair and threw it back, back behind my ears.

One foot and then the other onto the hot concrete bricks, the sash held in one sweaty hand. There I stood with the sparrows and the bees amid the cold sunlight, calling to my king.

"My king, my king, why hast thou forsaken me?"
I waited and cried a precious tear. I watched it drop and sail away, like I so much longed to do.

Just as I set one foot onto the nothing and let go of the sash, I felt a blessed bugle blast.

I lay bleeding on the ground, staring at the ant so quickly startled by my arrival, I heard a siren and voice, small, and child like.

"My loyal subjects, I have returned."

---

I wrote this while still dealing with the aftermath of my father's death, and finding out that I suffer from depression. I had just returned from the psychiatrist's office where I'd been perscribed Paxil. I had failed out of a semester of college, and there was question about whether I was well enough to go back.