I Keep Writing the Sad Songs

 I write in the dark. 

My people tell me I will go blind if I keep doing it. I question their sources and they shake their heads at me. I have been -4D myopic since I was fifteen. I lose eye-sigh exponentially with books read and wine glasses drank. The joke is on god, I chuckle. If I go blind I will learn braille. As for the wine I figure I won't mind the stains as much. 

In the dark the words I put to paper seem right. They rarely do if I look at them in daylight. Lately I have been looking at things in daylight often. I put them up against a pristine wall and tried to put them all together like ill-fitting jigsaw. Atrocious, out-of-focus photography; amateur ink drawings in mid-October rain; novels with no plan or direction. They were so right in the dark. They liked living in that old shoe-box with battered sides and black marker doodles. It felt like home and in that home everything seemed dear. 

But I pulled them out. Viciously I dragged them into the light revealing the imperfections and scars, Basil's painting with sunken eyes and blackened teeth. If I have wanted to create horror I have achieved mastery. I looked upon my crumbling kingdom and wanted to cry. The corpse of it looked ridiculous against the sleek modern surfaces of the new apartment. 

Some things are not meant for the light. They shine in the darkness, half hidden by shadows. I like to believe they look rather charming after a glass of wine. Don't mix them with real art, warns the label on the shoe-box entry, could cause disappointment and grief. Enjoy at your own peril. But god, what a show they make - a bazaar of nightmares and insecurities. 

Really it is a shame nobody approaches the ticket-office with broken windows. The show really is amusing if you squint at it just right. The last guest of honor made the ticket-master run away crying. Something about pathos and self-respect. The monsters did not mind. They grinned at each other with their crooked smiles and shook their heads. Self-respect? Whoever would come and seek self-respect in an old shoe-box? Outrageously funny. It made the shoe-box bar explode with bitter chuckles. 

Tonight I wrote some words in the dark. They felt right coming out. Certainly better than the things I pushed out into light in the last month or so. I tried to be the smiling girl I play. I really did. But the truth is you do not have to force a smile in the dark. The shoe-box people prefer it if you don't. Honestly, so do I. 

Fragment, October 2021