Sometimes at midnight

It’s a dark cold night, as I’m clouded with uncertainty, trudging through the sidewalk in haze, I bear witness to pillars above me that release an orange yellow blaze.

Well-lit banks of concrete guide me as mechanical monstrosities navigate in a still river of asphalt while the blaze of the seemingly endless row of pillars that line this artificial shore becomes mist and lightly sprays everything in its reach with an aura-like illumination.

During my aimless wandering, I’m reminded of a past life I’m not so sure I had lived.

Even Alexandria required only one pharos.

The rumble of passing engines scarcely resembled the crashing of the surf against the rocks in Fundy, but its coincidental similarities were all too clear to me. The rumbling, crashing through solid barriers and creating an echo-sphere out of harmony with all other sounds as amplified or as discrete as its creator intended them to be, did seem to me an unnatural duplicate, but it leaves you nonetheless thankful for this sense. At the very least you begin to realize how much you’ve taken it for granted when you note how much complaining you’ve had to make others endure as you whine about vibrations that are displeasing to the aural palate. Yet there are some out there, born without.

Numbers and figures would seem to tell you a different story, one of carelessness and ignorance, where those at the helm would intend to waver through one another and storm the man-made shore with a hazardous brutality resulting in a regrettable mortality. I observed with great humility that those behind the controls employed not even a fraction of the skill possessed by Phoenician navigators of the ancient past and that they were now driven by a God-like arrogance. Perhaps déjà vu comes from more than one past life.

I paused for a quick rest and took note of the towering grasses. In a burst of life they seemed to have been fired upwards from a single seed underground. Suddenly it seemed clear why their tops were so aptly named. Quite obtusely I began to contemplate. Would these towers continue growing? Once the pharoses lining the shores were burnt out and the dark upward horizon turned light blue, would each organism renew its vow to touch the face of its golden purveyor of life? Climbing higher and higher with its arms extended as if it were an infant reaching for a loving embrace from its mother. What of the creatures underground? Were they there simply because they lacked the ambition of their surface cousins? Or was it convenient to tunnel as a means of transportation? I’m sure at its start it was created with the most noble of intentions. All paying for a communal chariot, but the chariot had become overburdened and overcrowded. These Titans now banished to the subterranean would have to make due with an environment that was depreciating in its looks and function while those above were at the helm with their hazardous brutality resulting in regrettable mortality because of their self-appointed arrogance.

Still above them the Olympians travelled unseen in several castles of fog. A look into the night sky would show you the hunter aiming his bow, out to catch a meal as he traversed the horizon without regard to those who bore witness to his endeavours. Flying on his wings, you could hear a hiss-like roar and actually see the blinking red and blue lights of Hermes. Undoubtedly relaying messages from sky castle to sky castle as I’d seen him do several times a rotation, casting a shadow the odd time.

As I kept pacing forward I noticed a strange phenomenon. A doppelganger had been following me the whole time. A sinister brood incognito, leading at times and trailing at others; his pursuit seeming light at times as though he were taking it playfully. Rounding around my origin he mimicked my every step and even pranced about in a manner I understood to be offensive. An attempt to outrun proved ineffective as he matched me stride for stride. I hurled a punch downwards to where his face would be but his fist matched mine and even as I let out a yell of pain for my now-shattered knuckles it silently mirrored me. His body language revealed to me that this was all too funny—faceless indeed, he delighted in my misfortune, making a mockery of everything I stood for. Only in slumber and absolute darkness did his treachery disappear. I came to and noticed a dried out maple leaf. It had once stood for life and now through its demise, embodied renewal. It stood for everything I knew to be true.

2 Comments

  1. Hey, I want to say I really loved your piece of fantasia in the MEdium this week. Do tell, do you do any creative writing on the side?

    Please continue contributing more and more, as I’d always be willing to read anything by you.

    Valeria R.

  2. hey. thank you very much for the comment. i will say i do a fair amount of writing on my spare time. I’ve done a few other pieces but they were listed under pen names. Most of my story pieces are written as hyperbolized metaphors that are critiques of contemporary western culture. the poem pieces i do are more romantic in nature(being latin american, it consumes my soul) :) thank you again for the kind words :)
    i will be writing more, so keep reading :D

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