KAY Hay
The years reel, a filmstrip unraveling, forcing me into an eternal rewind. A flashing scene, a moment of rupture—chaos, motion, voices colliding in an airport's endless churn. And then, gravity. My gaze is yanked, my entire existence snagged on something small yet impossibly heavy. A handful of paper scraps, abandoned, or maybe waiting. Their presence feels intentional, like an event horizon demanding collapse.
Fate? Probability? No. This is something else. Something preordained yet lawless. I pick them up, and the world subtly tilts. Somewhere, someone watches. A lost sibling. A shadow folded between dimensions. A pulse of recognition with no source. My senses sharpen, doglike in their hunger, but no matter how deep I inhale, no matter how feverishly I scan the sea of faces, the author does not exist. Or perhaps they exist too much—so much that they evade the boundaries of space, time, and even the divine.
Still, I do what must be done. The scraps come to me—a treasure. I think abnormally . Not by choice, not by curiosity, but by an inescapable pull, the way all matter must fold toward the singularity. I spend a year—though it could be forever—deciphering the content of them, unearthing a story that was never meant to be spoken. And now, as it takes form, I send it spiralling outward, calling across the abyss: “No matter how cruel, how rootless I am—my mysterious lady, my ever-wondrous spectre—you orbit me like a dead sun, a thing that should not shine but does. Forgive me. I am sorry for sharing your memory. Nevertheless, they say, every great story needs a rogue Jonah, and I am yours.”
Fragments of the Past
Against fate itself, I pieced together the remnants of a soul. Each page was a wound, each line a scar. Fifty-seven weathered sheets, trembling with the weight of a life shattered yet unbroken. Her courage lay before me, raw and unburied.
"I found myself amidst the ruins of my mother. My fingers traced the brittle contours of her skull, the fragile architecture of memory itself. Bone to dust, dust to whispers, I listened to what remained. But duty called like a storm without mercy, dragging me into the abyss of night. I left her behind—her cursed shell abandoned to a thousand unseen eyes."
—Unreadable scratch.
"Shepherds with no faces led me to the edge of a great valley. They left me there, nameless among the desolate rocks of the Heights, with only my daughter clinging to the silence. 'To whomever you may be,' I murmured into the void, ‘my deepest gratitude, dear dearest, dearest...’"
I say: "Whoever you were, I am grateful. Dear dearest, dearest..."
1988.
"I remember, and I say: I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And nothing stains that absolute truth."
—Unreadable scratch.
"When they threw my brother from the sky, I saw his eyes flash—twin stars, wide and disbelieving. The soldiers had captured him where he lay, bleeding into the battlefield, and they took him not as a prisoner, not as a man, but as an experiment. A body to be tested. A lesson to be taught. They dragged him to the plane, flew him high above his land, and cast him into the void."
"And as he fell, the sky itself split with laughter. The soldiers screamed down at him, voices jagged with mockery: ‘These are your rocks, bastard. Not ours. You think so, bastard? You are dreaming.’"
And the rocks did not dream. They simply received him
Aftermath, Aftermath
"Dogs came later. They tore his corpse apart, dragging him limb by limb until nothing remained whole. And then the floods came, sweeping his bones through valleys and ravines, stripping them of their weight, scattering what was left of his name. That was the end of his short life."
"Then they came—the soldiers. And they took his wife. Sold her to many men. She was pregnant. And when at last we were certain she was dead, we read a thousand verses over an empty grave, a prayer that reached nothing."
1986.
"Aftermath, aftermath."
"I survived. A decade passed, then another Al- Anfal came and went, and I remained."
—More unreadable scratch.
"A boy stepped forward—charming, with a face carved from the sweetest sorrow. His lips trembled, his eyes glistened, his voice barely a whisper through the weight of years."
"Mother."
(Many words were missing.)
"I felt it. That frame—the outline of an angel, sculpted in the agony of waiting. He walked so sweetly, so proud, that I nearly screamed. 'The only man left in the family.' I stood frozen."
"‘Mother, I have searched for you for so long.’"
"Touch his face. Hold him. Kiss him," my friend wept beside me. But I only stood there, shaking like a wretched creature, my mind emptied of thought, my tongue useless in my mouth. 'You can. You can,' my friend cried out."
(Many words are lost.)
"God! Torture me not, I beg you—I beg you, Almighty!"
"I was speaking to no one, speaking to the silence, when he said: ‘I always kept your picture with me.’"
1999.
(Many words are missing.)
"He is not your son. He is not your son."
"Do not get carried away with your feelings," they warned. "One must be careful these days."
"O' Golden Heights."
"Golden breeding."
"My tribe."
—Unreadable scratch.
"You let a stranger into your house."
"Goddamn," I screamed. But even as the word left my lips, I wished I had not spoken it.
"Listen to no man," my friend urged. "He has your eyes, your lips, your nose... are you blind?"
But I had no one. No one at all.
And yet, the truth did not wait for permission. It was unearthed—not with reason, not with proof, but with something deeper: the fangs of my heart, the marrow of my lost soul, the relentless force of knowing. I dragged his face out of the abyss, piece by piece, and in that moment, I knew.
"If truth must be spoken," I declared, "then let it be said: He is my son. He is the truth."
And from then on, there was nothing left to say.
Except this:
"The graveyard is no place for lies."
I speak only because there is no one left to listen.
(2000.)
Past is a venom coursing through me...
(Missing word.)
"The past is not behind me; it is within me, buried in the marrow of my bones. It is a specter coiled at the core of my being, a shadow lurking beneath my skin, spying on the world through the pores of my flesh. Its gaze is serpentine—sinuous, watchful, waiting."
"With each breath, I swallow the dust of forgotten divinity, a silent witness to the ruin of the laden God—the one bound by a thousand chains, the one shackled to us until the end of time. And so I whisper softly, ‘Farewell,’ urging my own ego to shatter Him, to break the chains that no god can sever."
"Creep. Creep out," I say.
(Many words are missing.)
In the labyrinth of recollection, I walk the ancient paths of my town—not a place, but a wound, a history that breathes in the dust and sighs through the broken walls. The air is thick with the scents of ceaseless strife, with the ghostly weight of voices that will never fall silent. I push forward, deeper into the abyss of memory, my steps echoing against the stones of the Walk of Death.
We were fools, all of us. Fools who could not stop unearthing the graves of our past. Fools who could not leave the dead to rest.
"Well," I say, reluctantly. "Yes."
But in the silence of my soul, I proclaim something else:
"Embark upon the voyage to the farthest reaches of existence."
I have turned that verse over in my mind a thousand times, pressing forward, untethered, until I stand at the crossroads where past and future collide. There, where our wary gazes meet the spectral echoes of our ancestral land, we converse in the tongue of the wind—like highlanders of old, like those who spoke before the world was set aflame.
"Behold," they say, "there is no escape. You are bound to the holiness of the collective fate."
I clutch my restless heart.
"Yet you cast me aside," I say, longing for a place beyond reach.
"I renounce the confines of tradition and the shackles of servitude," I declare, and though disbelief flickers in their eyes, my will does not waver.
"I am not deceived," I answer their doubts.
"Then you are resigned," they mourn.
"I shall depart, never to return," I vow.
"And what of your lineage? Will you forsake the memory of your kin?" they ask.
With a heart made heavier by truth, I reply:
"My kin dwell in the realm of the departed."
(Scratched words).
The season's breath stirred before its time, a whisper of upheaval. The wind awoke with a sudden hunger, tearing through the streets, unbalancing the steps of young scholars who did not yet know what it meant to fear. Along Pretoria Road, the towering sentinels of nature swayed—a slow, knowing rhythm—casting off their golden robes in a final, sorrowful dance. Their seeds scattered, like the echoes of my unspoken desires, drifting down the same paths my ancestors once walked, carried by invisible hands.
Then, the storm came.
It did not arrive—it descended. It crashed upon the earth, tore through the roadside sanctuaries, and roared into the hills like a god unchained. The trees bent as if bowing to an unseen king. The sky split apart.
And then—
The fire.
(Missing words.)
The bush ignited. Not a spark, not a flicker—but a devouring, an insatiable beast of flame.
(Missing words.)
I shrieked into the chaos, my voice breaking against the wind. "Run, run, run!"
The children ran.
(Missing words.)
I stood still.
I stood still because I had seen this before.
My ghosts whispered beside me, their voices curling in the heat. They did not beg, nor weep, nor scream. They only watched.
For I had learned this truth: the past does not chase you; it stands and waits.
I turned away from the fire only to meet another—the one that smolders inside me. A quiet, merciless burning. The weight of grievances unspoken, justice unanswered. The world, vast and indifferent, offered no reprieve. Our rights—our most basic rights—were treated not as birthright but as a plea, as if to exist itself was an act of defiance.
"I am but a dweller of the mountains," I say.
And they reply, "You dwell at the nadir of the rock."
But I know the truth.
Even from the lowest stone, even from the deepest valley, I hear the voices of my people. And when their bones cry out, when the wind carries their grief to my ears, what choice is left to me but to mend what has been broken?
"Stop this folly," they warn me.
And yet, my hands do not still.
For if no one else will gather the shattered souls of my kin, then who shall?
This is beyond divinity. It is beyond godhood. It is the raw force of something older than gods—something that does not bow, that does not plead, that simply is.
Does this strike the mark, or shall we carve it deeper?
I walked, endlessly, down the street—each step dissolving into the next, my thoughts unraveling like a serpent shedding its skin. A thousand paces deep, I found myself submerged in a world of fragrant lavender.
Lavender—the color of dusk’s last breath, the scent of ghosts who refuse to be buried.
The rain whispered its secrets against their trembling petals.
And above the imperial avenue, I drifted. Laden with memories sharp enough to wound. The season exhaled, and I swallowed its sorrow.
"You!" I shouted into the void.
"Even in deserts, you might meet a friend," the echo replied.
"Hold on," I murmured. But the words did not belong to me.
They came from him—his voice, thin and spectral, seeping through the mist of my wandering. My husband, my phantom, his poetry weaving through the silence, struggling to graft itself onto my flesh.
I should confess... (Missing words.) I am but a futile scum, a whisper lost in the wind, squandering moments in life’s vanishing gleam.
"That might bring you back, dear," he pleads, his voice a fragile bridge between worlds.
But I—the real one, the defiant one—pull away.
"Get out of my life," I command.
And like a ghost, I dissolve. Like whispers swallowed by the storm.
With the wind, I flee. Beneath silver sheets of rain, he calls after me.
"Bring me back."
"We are but strangers," I reply, my words scattering like dying embers.
"I know," he says. And then he is gone.
Trepidation coils around me like a noose as I await his arrival. Outside, the autumn night hums, thick with unseen hands. I stand before the old apartment window, the ancient balcony beneath my feet, the weight of a thousand lifetimes pressing into my spine.
I open my palms, sifting through gemstones—their facets swallowing the light, swallowing me. Each stone bears the faces of the dead, their stories etched in silent screams.
"Gemstones are God's favored accessories," he once told me, and I nearly believed him.
He, my husband. The man who walked between beauty and madness.
He named me Origin of Symmetries.
The beast that read Blake in the dark.
"What immortal hand could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
I, barely breathing, whisper— "Never let..." (Missing words.)
"Agile, like Comte de Lautréamont," he once called me. (Missing words.)
"You are not clear, my man," I had laughed.
"I am. I am," he had said. (Missing words.)
(Missing words.)
Years have collapsed into dust, and only now do I see—
The tiger’s frame was mine.
I, the brutalest beauty. The deadliest thing to ever bear a name. The woman they all wanted but never owned. The phantom that burned in the eyes of a thousand suitors.
"Three symmetry rows," he said once.
Did he ensnare me with his spell?
"Stop it," I whisper. "Stop it."
"Bid me farewell, dear."
"So long, dear. So long, dear Heights."
And in that instant, the truth uncoiled like a beast from its den. My beauty—wild, unbroken—was his opium. He had conjured me from the marrow of his mind, shaped me in the forges of obsession, painted me into his youth like a curse he could not lift.
"One thousand years ago!" I screamed, unraveling.
"Oh, Great God, he has lived in me for so long!"
"Our frames, dear," he murmured from beyond the veil.
"My love," I sobbed.
"So cruel you were! How dare you die without me!"
(Missing words.)
"Cruelest. Dearest. You are dead."
And in the silence that followed, I heard it—
The beating of my heart, hammering out his name like a death knell.
I turned.
And there it was—
The abyss.
Deep. Infinite. Its eyes staring into mine, hollow as the sockets of time itself. (Missing words.)
I felt the weight of the years pressing upon me, suffocating me. I dulled my senses, dimmed the ember of my existence, let the shadows swallow me whole. In obscurity, I sought my final refuge—where truth and lies are no longer distinct, where the whispers of the past dissolve into the hush of the void.
"Your course of metamorphosing..."
"Have we been brought up for this?" I ask the darkness.
No answer comes.
Only silence.
Only the slow decay of memory.
. ****
I sat alone beneath the quiet, cool dusk, where the discarded shells of tetrahedrons lay scattered—mute relics of forgotten symmetry, glittering beneath the pale burgundy glow of the past. Shadows stretched long, weaving themselves into the fabric of memory.
An old Greek master stood beside me, his hands worn by centuries, his chisel steady as the pulse of time. With measured strokes, he engraved the names of my beloved ones onto the stones’ faces, binding their essence to the eternal.
"Men forget," he mused, his voice a whisper of marble dust, "but stones do not."
He called me The Lady of Stones.
The name fit, though it was not mine to choose.
The man himself was a relic, a living fragment of history—ancient and tasteless without his stones.
"You are not Greek, are you?" he asked, eyes flickering with amusement.
"No," I answered, unwavering. "I am a stone."
He regarded me in silence, then nodded.
"It is not bad to be a stone, my lady."
"Aye," I said, a slow smile curving my lips. "We are stones."
In solitude, beneath the hush of the dying day, I traced the carved names with my fingertips. Their edges were sharp, but not as sharp as memory. The Greek master worked in silence, but his presence hummed like an unspoken truth.
"Forgetfulness befalls men, but stones endure," he said at last, his words carving themselves into the marrow of my bones.
"Is it an everlasting curse?" he pondered aloud.
"No," I murmured, my gaze lost in the endless procession of time. "It is unyielding."
He looked at me, perplexed.
"Perplexed?" I asked, tilting my head.
"Yes," he admitted, his chisel pausing midair.
I exhaled, slow and deliberate.
"Aye," I agreed, nodding toward the inscriptions, "but in our stone-like hearts, truth never dies."
When the great heights fell—when the towers crumbled and the sky wept—every breath bore the weight of untold sagas. Each heartbeat echoed with the cadence of celestial hymns, yet my story lay untouched, though rephrased by the hands of divine destiny-makers.
Suspicion clung to me like a shroud. I felt the eyes of eager scribes upon me, their quills poised, their ink thirsting for scandal. They coveted my downfall, seeking to weave my ruin into their wretched displays.
But I stood, immovable.
A bastion against their voyeuristic hunger.
Never would they drink from the wellspring of my sorrow.
Never would they revel in the spectacle of my demise.
I swore, with the last embers of my soul, that I would deny them the satisfaction. I would endure, unyielding, until the final curtain fell.
"Nothing there."
(Missing words.)
Midnight unfurled its obsidian cloak.
I sat in the dim hush, counting the spectral visitors of my past—ghosts of friends, whispers of kin, the weight of eternity pressing upon me.
"Almighty," I murmured to the night, "what could men of that time be doing now?"
"Nothing, baby. Nothing, nothing."
His voice drifted to me, an echo from the abyss.
"Nothing?" I repeated, a shiver slipping down my spine. "God forbid."
"Nothing is the pinnacle of tragedy."
"I do nothing, darling."
"I know."
And in that silence, I understood.
Nothing is the weight of a forgotten name. Nothing is the absence of a heartbeat once remembered.
Nothing is the void where love once lived.
And we, the stones, bear witness.
In my time, you could find them gathered—whether by the dunghills, along the barren creeks, or within the tranquil courtyard of the mosque, where silence reigned like an unseen scribe etching fate upon the earth. They stood, cloaked in dark or khaki coats, their rifles slung across weary shoulders, their fingers dancing over the beads of long, winding prayers. Their eyes, fixed upon the mist-shrouded canopy of the cemetery, traced the towering silhouettes of ancient oaks, as if seeking communion with the dead.
Amid the tendrils of smoke curling in the evening’s breath, they spoke—not in hushed whispers, but in the bold cadence of men who wove history into speech. Tales spun from silk and dust, half-truths laced with poetry, voices rich with sorrow and bravado alike.
The ghost beside me, draped in sardonic elegance, exhaled a knowing chuckle.
"Deceit," he murmured, "has a voice too sweet to resist."
I nodded.
"Indeed."
For even the most deceitful words carried within them the weight of a thousand buried truths, their essence woven into the very fabric of our minds.
A swelling wave of a renowned symphony washed over the boulevard, drowning me in the relentless embrace of dusk. Tears welled in my eyes as I listened—not just to the music, but to the solitary resonance of my own existence.
I was the lonely snowgum.
Rooted yet adrift, swaying yet unmoved, my voice lost in the distant melodies that rose from the brothels lining the night’s edges. Their songs, ghostly and honeyed, wrapped around me like a net of sighs.
"I am a lonely snowgum," murmured a voice within me.
"Indeed," I whispered back, baring my soul to the unflinching stars.
Beneath their cold illumination, I gazed upon the street below—a flood of faces, a mosaic of a thousand races, shifting like tides beneath the neon glow.
Yet within this riot of beauty, I harbored an unspeakable sorrow.
For though I stood amidst them, I was marred, unseen, tainted by an invisible stain.
Caught between the call of freedom and the weight of sin, I curled into myself, tracing the scar upon my chest with trembling fingers.
"I saw a man."
The man I saw was my husband's friend.
"Aye," he murmured, unfolding a scrap of poetry before me.
I thought him a genius.
Once, we too had been poets—bards, writers, singing like nightingales.
But that time had passed.
My husband had loved him.
And he had loved me.
He had struggled, desperate and silent, for a love he dared not name.
And today, with a hoarse voice, he recited a poem.
But the words failed him.
They failed the beauty they sought to capture.
And yet, the bastard had crossed the Pacific for me.
Victoria the Great,
Goddess of a bygone era,
Once seized Zeus' scepter
And ensnared a soul, sharper than Winston;
The sovereign of her chivalry,
Enthroned upon the magic of history,
To fill the vastness of her throne.
"Her majesty is frozen in the narrow sky of the city," he mused.
I used to sit by the queen’s monument and whisper the same old question.
"What might happen to us?"
Had I revealed my secrets?
I wasn’t sure.
But something in his gaze, in the tremor of his breath, unsettled me.
"He scared the hell out of me."
For a fleeting moment, I thought the beast before me might be my own man.
I knew the bastard had begun his poem the moment he set foot here.
"I dare to say," he murmured, "let’s reserve a place for you in the Genocide Museum."
"Are you insane?" I screamed.
"No. I am serious."
"Get the hell out of here, now, bastard!"
"I’ll go and never return," he said.
"Wait, wait," I spat. "How dare you say that?"
"I am crucified," he whispered.
"So what? We all have been crucified."
"We crossed oceans, spaces, skies," he said.
"Alone?" I asked.
"No. With Ely Banister Soane."
I was tired.
"I am tired too," he said.
And then the storm came.
It roared through the city’s underbelly, beneath the blue cloud, until the wind crushed the city’s wings.
"Crushed her chest."
"Flattened the walls of her heart."
"Stop it, bastard," I hissed. "They were children."
The wind slammed against the trees, schools, windows, our doors.
It shrieked, it clawed, it tore apart my husband's frame.
"Right, right."
"So what?"
"Gone, with tears."
"He is here." He clutched his heart.
"Bastard."
"The city?"
"No. Him."
"He was the home of a thousand virtues, allegories, poems, and epics—flowers of mountains, songs of mountains, our fragrant bower... yours, and mine, and my own sibling," he murmured.
With bitter remembrance, I rose—a giant in my grief.
The tempest had raged, had screamed, had swallowed us whole.
Smoke billowed.
The town shrank into splinters and embers.
And then—
In an instant—
He was gone.
Vanished into the ether.
"Goddamn."
I stood there, murmuring steadily, "How dare you?"
A passerby startled me.
"Are you waiting for the Happy Prince, your majesty?"
His voice held the whisper of a jest, but his eyes betrayed something deeper.
A wayward soul.
A wanderer, like me.
I regarded his figure with a bitter gaze, finding it nearly as flawed as my own.
****
Years had to pass.
The weight of them settled like dust upon my skin, silent, inescapable.
And yet, time had no mercy. It brought me here again—to this moment, this street, this face I had tried to forget.
As I looked out onto George Street, I saw him.
My husband’s friend.
Leisurely, unhurried, as though the years had been kind to him. His gaze met mine with an unsettling familiarity, a look that lingered too long, as if drawn by some invisible thread neither of us could sever.
"Mother sent me binoculars and a new radio when I was a little guerrilla," he remarked, his voice soft with nostalgia, his lips barely curving around the words.
It wasn’t his first time watching me.
A chill crawled up my spine.
"Bastard, you were supposed to be gone," I muttered, but he did not flinch. His stare remained steady, fixed on me as if searching for something—some proof of life, some remnant of the woman he once knew.
Tears welled in his eyes, unexpected, out of place against his usual composure.
I lifted a cynical hand in acknowledgment, a wave so slight it could have been mistaken for indifference. Yet, long after he disappeared from view, I felt his presence lingering, an unshaken shadow in the depths of my mind.
"Have you ever had an objective plan in your life?" he had once asked me.
"No," I had answered. "I haven’t... I’ve never had one."
That was the truth.
It was the harshest time for him.
For both of us.
I could not contain the tumult within me. We existed in a state of perpetual immaturity—two souls caught between knowing and not knowing, wanting and fearing. He lacked the courage to confront me, and I, feral and merciless, was too much for him to bear.
The moment he saw the depth of my seriousness, he recoiled.
He shielded his face, turned, and fled.
Through the crowd, he tore—a wounded thing, a ghost escaping into the world of the living.
I wanted to call his name.
But before I could form the syllables, before I could give shape to the person he had been, he was gone.
Yet he did not let me break him.
Not completely.
He found refuge in the doorways of forgotten streets, in the silent corners where poets go to die. He clung to his craft, his words the last shield against a world that had stripped him bare.
Prisons, battlefields—he had known them both.
He had worn suffering like a second skin, carried his wounds as though they were medals.
And I, cruel and reckless, had tried to destroy him with my words.
With every savage insult, every venomous syllable, I sought to hollow him out—to reduce him to dust, to render him weightless in my hands.
But he remained.
Unyielding.
He saw me still—through all of it—as something pure, something perfect.
And that was the worst cruelty of all.
"I am a bitch," I confessed to no one.
The words sat heavy on my tongue, thick with self-loathing.
"A terrible woman. Mean and cruel."
I whispered it again, let it sink in, let it cut.
The northern bay stretched before me, restless under the night’s breath.
The lights danced upon the waves like shattered stars, and I stood there—rooted, hollowed, waiting for some revelation that would not come.
There, in the distance, in the hazy reflection of the water, I saw her.
My former self.
Tall, resolute.
A storm of my own making.
"I won’t ever be..."
The vow remained unfinished, a silent promise to rise—if not to redemption, then at least to understanding.
In solitude, I sought the queen.
She did not answer, but she did not turn away.
Her stone gaze was a comfort, her presence an anchor.
Beneath her feet, I found the only stillness I had known in years.
And as I looked up at her cold, grey face, I thought of his poem—the words he had left behind, the ones that refused to fade.
"When I stare unto thee, further up to thy grey face, akin to me..."
The rest was lost.
But I knew what followed.
"My bleeding wounds may torment thy conscience."
In the midst of the disquietude permeating George Street, the city hummed like an old, restless beast beneath my feet. The neon glow of bars flickered in the puddles, fractured like the remnants of forgotten prayers. A faint breeze carried the scent of stale beer and wet asphalt, mingling with the echo of footsteps that never quite belonged to me.
I wandered without purpose, yet my body moved with the certainty of something ancient, something beyond my will. Whether leftward or northward, I was drawn—ineluctably—toward the sublime majesty of St. Mary’s Cathedral.
It loomed, veiled in the gauze of evening mist, a monument to sins both absolved and unspoken. Its spires reached like desperate hands toward the indifferent heavens, as if demanding recompense from a God long deaf to the pleas of this city’s ghosts.
But my diary stretches farther than this.
No sooner do I pull away than I find myself again before the Statue of Queen Victoria the Great. She stands as she always has, bearing the weight of history, of conquests written in blood and marble. I wait—breathless—for that eerie wave of recognition to seize me, to remind me why I am here.
It arrives like an old melody, half-remembered, half-feared.
This bond, this tethering to the austere visage, is something older than me, older than time. It is the longing of childhood, the strange ache of The Heights, where melancholy is a kingdom unto itself.
And then, as I read the bastard’s poem, the question rises unbidden, like a whisper from the grave:
"Who the hell is walking by my side?"
His poem concludes, and I inhale deeply, as if the very act of breathing could fold me into its last line, into the solace it promises but never quite delivers.
"What are you doing? The manager may return soon."
"What can he do?"
"Inflict your mind with more cracks," she muses, the voice in my head no longer entirely my own.
A pause. A sharp intake of air.
"Perhaps someday."
I toy with the thought of confronting him—Mao, the unseen overseer, the looming shadow. "Fuck you, Mao," I imagine myself saying, defiant, reckless.
And yet, I know.
By then, I will have aged beyond recognition, beyond expectation.
Behind the carefully curated mask of my present self, no trace remainas of my former ruin. The years have smoothed my skin, even erased the smallpox scar that once anchored me to my past.
Yet I know better.
The map is still there—etched beneath this delicate pink underwear, drawn in scars and memory.
And still, his poem lingers within me, tracing invisible lines across my ribs, pressing against my breath like the ghost of a hand that never dared to touch.
I felt it as a visceral imprint upon my soul—a wound, a signature, a whisper.
A savage impression that moved in time with my sighs, with the relentless drumbeat of my heart.
Beyond me, the city exhaled.
The crowd, dissipating like mist in the maw of the metropolis, became nothing more than an echo. They surged forward, an unseeing tide of flesh and motion, vanishing into the labyrinth of alleyways and underground tunnels.
Each face—a blank canvas.
Each gaze—a void, fixed forward but seeing nothing.
Their anonymity was a kind of violence. A disregard that could one day be washed away by the tides of time—or swallowed whole by them.
But I am unequivocally certain:
We inhabit the correct celestial body.
And yet, when I write, it feels as though I am composing letters to the dead.
To my siblings, lost in the passage of time.
To the next of kin who once held me as their own.
To the remnants of a self I buried beneath years of forgetting.
I stand at the precipice of existence.
Where the ancient ocean draws its breath, where the Sun Goddess accepts her nightly tribute, where the air itself hums with something old and unyielding.
Longing claws at me, but it is no longer a gentle thing—it is a wound that never learned to close.
And here, in this vast expanse beneath the firmament, I hear my late husband’s voice.
Dante’s words, passed from his lips to mine, from one world to the next:
"I turned me to the right hand, on the other side,
To behold the other pole, and saw four stars,
Ne'er seen before save by the primal people."
I breathe.
"But, but I can see them."
The stars, untamed and burning.
And with their light upon me, I understand.
"It is time to transcend the shackles of the past," I whisper.
And I step forward.
The End
Autumn 2004
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