Some call me “enigma”

Some make me rhyme

Some weave my words just pass time

But I’ll tell you a secret.

I am not so peculiar.

You know me so well.

You might call me familiar.

A question.

An answer.

As you see up above.

You twist and you turn me.

You tease out my lines.

Only the clever may know me.

Only the keenest of minds.

A tangle of words.

A solution Embedded.

The answer in the question.

Perhaps you see where I’m headed.

Unseen, but not unheard.

That was the hard truth she’d learned to accept in her younger years.

Well, the former had always been true. The latter was always a sticking point in her sanity. Sometimes the voices trailed behind her, lingering in open archways, calling to her from afar.

Their words are never able to form themselves into anything more than a distant query. She’d learned to stop asking for clarity, they would not give it. Maybe they were unable. She didn’t know, and frankly after so many years grew beyond caring.

The constant noise was enough to make anyone stark raving mad. Voices, voices, so many voices. It was maddening.

The past was now, the present tomorrow, and the future seemingly never to be. Stuck in time she thought. With nobody to commune with. What a pity it must be. A mere imprint of their lives, a pale echo of what was.

Long ago, almost further back than she could remember, her mother had pulled her aside. For what, she could not recall. She only remembered her soft black hair, how it swung into her eyes when she bent down to speak. It was pleasant. To be spoken to with such gravity.

So long ago. So long since she’d felt her mother. The warmth of her palm on her cheek. Her father and brother gone away in the same instant. Washed away into nothingness.

She’d consulted others, trying to find them. In their world. Wherever it was. To speak her last words, to lament the time stolen away on a rainy night.

Anger, frustration, passionate rage. On the worst nights they bubbled up without consequence. Her good intentions, her sweet nature washed away in brief bursts of violence.

Talk to me.

The slam of the door. Saved for only when she was truly enraged.

Listen to me.

A wail of anguish, echoing in the darkness.

No answer, save for the unintelligible whispers.

Speak up, speak up.

She could see them walk around.

Listen, listen.

On the nights where they huddled to grieve. She watched alone.

See me. See me.

It is so hard to be timeless without you.

I am the festering thought that burrows.

Holds tight as you peer into the faceless future.

You wish me away but I curl like an oily trap around your thoughts.

Let me overstay and suddenly you are filled to the brim.

Too easy it is to write me off as a temporary hesitation or brief flit of insecurity,

Too easy it is to pretend me away, to shake my utterances from your head.

But I know what is deep inside.

I know what is true.

That behind your gilded valor, I know the real you.

The terror behind the visage. The spineless being you are.

I am the rot that lies within.

I have burrowed deep inside.

You are left with me when all you’re better whims subside.

You may weather.

You may suffer.

You may rail against me

But I am what is left at the end.

When dark has come and light has no sanctuary.

Where there is light, a shadow is cast.

Where there is music, a silence to be felt.

Where there is laughter, sorrow to follow.

But what is the absence of bravery, of courage, the dauntlessness that we honor?

It is me my friend.

And my, what a pair we make.

For you know me most intimately of all and I am the only companion you can never forsake.