Where There's Light,
There's Shadow
Award Winning Poems from Where there's Light, there's Shadow
Braille
Being blind I am forced to read
Braille. It does not matter if it
is night or day; it is always midnight
for me.
Something about reading a horror
novel in the darkness excites me.
So I picked up a story about
murder on a perpetually dark
highway. Written by a man who
was blinded by rage - talk about
the blind leading the blind.
I do not see words - I feel them.
Upon tracing the letters, the
first word I felt was anger.
The feeling built up inside of me
until I was consumed with rage.
This was followed by the odd
adjective, noun, and verb, all
lost in miniature mountains of Braille.
The deep valley of a V, or
the immense crater of an O.
The next word I felt was loneliness.
A desert opened up inside of me, it rolled on forever
under a starry sky. There was nobody in sight only the
wind moaning its lonely song. Then I came across the
word depression. Suddenly a great weight crushed my
chest, as if an elephant had parked itself on my lungs.
Eventually I came across the noun knife, and the adjectives
which gave it detail. I felt the knife in my grip, and
it was as sharp as a shark's tooth. Jewels were encrusted
in the handle.
As I read the word cold, I felt the frost upon the blade.
The next word turned my spine to ice, the word was murder.
At that I passed out.
When I came to, I was covered in liquid. It was the blood
of my wife, murdered with a kitchen knife.
Passenger
I sit at the terminal of my heart,
awaiting you like a passenger
awaiting a train. Only trains
have schedules and arrive on
time.
You do not.
Timetables are posted around
the terminal like pages from
a bible. People find reassurance
in their accuracy. However,
the gospel of the human heart
is a lot more tenuous.
Train tracks like arteries lead
away from the terminal, bringing
people into and away from my heart.
They go about their business like
red blood cells replenishing my
body. I wait nervously as day turns
to night, and the trains become ghost
carriages. I sit and hope that
one of the inward bound trains carries
you towards my heart.
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