The Case

I opened the case. The fresh, mint sea swept, sun bleached, creamy scent hit me like the ice blue and white crest of a wave.

The open case beckoned me like Narnia and I was gone, through a funnel, back in time, long time, short time, over miles and lands and seas, back to where I should have been.

Ironic, that, when I was there, I was never really there at all - I was looking sadly forward, through a hundred mirrors to here.

We stood on the cliff top, by the statue of Christ, and I was not there, with you at my side, I was sadly looking over the miles, over the months, to here.

We embraced in a pool of sea-scape sapphire blue, only the veil of water between your skin and mine, yet I was here.

We drove up the mountainside, under the shade of a thousand trees, and out into a sun soaked heaven where the slim clouds could touch out to us with fairy’s hands and kisses, yet I was here.

Still more ironic that I would give anything to be back there again.

Love and Pride

You laid the floor. It took hours and hours of hard labour. But the floor was laid.

You bled for me on that floor; the hard white edges cut through the skin on your hands and fingers, teardrops of rubies fell onto its surface like red rain onto snow.

Something swelled inside of me when I returned to find you on hands and knees, bleeding but still dogged, still determined, still fitting the pieces together and my head was dizzy with a mixture of love and pride.

I am unsure whether I will feel anything even vaguely like it again.

Heart's Fortress

The heart is encased by a perfect circle of glass bricks, not quite transparent, not nearly opaque; there is still chance enough to see it beating out its passionate rhythm.

It is a beautiful thing.

The mere glimpse of it sets the soul alight.

Someone has built this wall around the heart, high and strong and seemingly impenetrable. Someone is determined that no-one be allowed inside. But someone’s materials are ill chosen - they may as well have left cracks in the glass, forged a doorway in the cone.

Each brick is a laugh, moulded and crafted to keep away the tears. Each glass block is a smooth comment with a serrated edge to keep trespassers at bay. Each ice-like slab is a shrug of the shoulders, the draining of another tumbler, laissez faire and do not care emanate from the coldness that surrounds this beating pulse.

Someone thinks the heart is safe inside.

Others will not rest until they have scaled the slippery walls of its fortress.

Second Round

The novice heart did not even survive one round; the blood had been drained before all of the crowd had even taken their seats.

Sad heart; weep for it. The scarcely living thing was never even permitted to experience the heady, dizzying fullness of love. All it really caught was a glimpse of what could have been, might have been, and such glimpses are far from satisfying.

But I am undeterred; as I bury the dead heart, I am already planning the cloning of another.

Barely Beating

After the breakage, I thought the blood would pump without the need for that intensive valve, but I was wrong.

In the empty space left after the fragments had been cleared was forged a new heart, fragile and half transparent and barely beating, yet flushing further with scarlet daily.

It was not long before a ridiculous prompting from I know not where tempted me to chance the delicate organ on this game of pitch and toss and in the ring I placed it, while the crowd cheered and jeered and the Father Time looked silently and quizzically on.

The embryonic heart will be beaten. It is as near a certainty as earth can offer. It is already skipping beats. It is already hurting. How short a life this heart will have before it is broken completely.

Worth Work?

It's work, this thing, these mutterings and murmerings. They are loaded with amunition, as deadly as a sawn-off shotgun in the hands of a maniac.

I never much cared for work; too difficult, too time consuming and scarcely worthwhile, no matter what the project or how high the aim, how laudable the goal.

And this work is so pointless. It is shuffling papers around a desk merely to look as if one is busy. It is a deviation from the real things that beg to be addressed.

And, whichever way I look at it, I cannot justify it.

It simply is not worth the work.

Shrug

This is a shrug of the shoulders. This is total ambivalence.

I cannot compete. I will lose the race. I shall not even attempt to run.

I throw my running shoes onto the sandy track, careless of their value, unconcerned as to their expense.

Here; I throw up my hands, I concede.

Have the medal, take the prize.

Accept my congratulations with a shrug.

Black or Red?

I stand by the roulette table and, for the first time in my life, it occurs to me that I have something with which to gamble. This, in itself, is a shock. The chips are cold hard and smooth in my hands.

People place their bets; numbers, colours, intakes of breath as the wheel spins, gasps when small wins are made, groans when little losses take place. They place their bets. They come and go. They scare me, so sure in what they are doing do they seem.

I have no idea what I am doing, even though I now recognise the value of these chips.

There is no way I can pick a number on which to lay this weight in my hands. There is no way I am even able to choose a colour. Red or black, red or black, red or black? One must surely win; this is a universal law, is it not?

But to me, the red and the black are both losers, and I wonder, as people continue to come and go, and I stand in a paroxysm of despair, why I am the only one who sees this.

Still Digging

I don't need to be told how foolish this is; I am all too aware of it already. I was aware from the birth, from the conception.

I don't need to be told that I am walking down a street that is just as peril filled, if not more so, than the last, that the place is seedier, the shops are cheaper, the people meaner, the pavement dirtier and the road strewn with obstacles that could cursh a spirit, break a heart.

I am walking down this street nevertheless. I don't know how not to - there seems to be no other place to go.

And I don't need to feel surprised when I find myself at the bottom of a hole, staring up at a palid blue-grey sky.

Why would I? I dug this hole myself.

Scarlet Heart

Pop me in your red wagon and pull me along.

Rouge up my cheeks and call me Dolly.

Tie a cherry ribbon in my hair.

Polish my ruby shoes.

I will act the part, I will play the role and dance out the tune, do whatever you want me to do.

My veins are blue, but I have a scarlet heart.

Returns

Have your diamond band.

Put it back in its case and proffer it to someone else, like the fool on the knees that you are; you will never find what you are searching for - why even try?

And you, you can have your ruby. I toss it on the slate floor as I march from the room with the too high ceilings and the gothic windows. In all probability, it was red glass and nothing more.

It was only ever fantasy, after all.

Ruby

He is offering her everything she ever wanted.

Everything.

It is encapsulated in the gold band he holds out expectantly to her, the one which is symmetrically set with ten precision cut diamonds, not too many, nor too few. He feels sure and certain that she will take it - it is all she has ever wanted, after all - and when she does, his heart can stop beating so violently in his swelling chest.

She wants it.

But there is something else which catches her eye.

A ruby.

It is just a rock, not cut nor styled by expert hands, not mounted in gold or scattered across the circumference of a bracelet and yet, it has the kind of rugged, ragged, indecipherable charm which she finds it impossible to resist.

She wants that ruby, though what status or guarantee it will furnish her with is questionable, to say the least. She does not know how she will wear it, what she will do with it.

But the scarlet inside her does not care - to hold it in her hand, for however long or short a time, may be enough.

The Inevitable

I cannot let this happen, I should not let this happen, I will not let this happen.

Allowing it would be akin to throwing myself heedlessly from a precipice of unknown height into a canyon the floor of which I cannot see; certain pain, inevitable doom.

But six black magic kittens purr and play upon a white rug, a cold hard burning sun has set early accross the sea, my hand is encased in another and in a pocked placed, green shoots herald the Spring, my eyes are lined with smiling.

These and other visions dance before me and I reach for them over the edge.

I know you will not catch me when I fall; but it is inevitable that I hope you do.