The Meteor

PART I.

A pilgrimage above the cityscape, t’where chaos forms illusive waterfall. We searched for Meaning (our naïve mistake) and sought to find it in the stars to fall. In fleeting moments, we almost forgot The Solipsistic Law: our foe, our war. Much wine and time and silence passed (though fraught) … then forthwith I beheld my Meteor! Deaf, dumb and blind yet inching ever nigh, as stolid as it’d been since I was born, my memories and hopes would make it writhe, yet to our fate it would again return… It landed ‘pon my brow; I did succumb and wept, as if “untimely,” I’d become

PART II.

a paradox of swelling adipose, in dull dispute with gray rhytidal lay’rs. Eventually, edentulated bones would barely grasp my relocated hairs. I close my eyes; we interdigitate, confused and scared and lost in frantic thought. It marches on to cruelly penetrate the Lonely Fortress “I”… the echoes stop! It floats through where I thought my Self to be, neither inflicting nor enduring harm. And all this time, I’d suffered needlessly, but fear gave way to trust and then to calm… Beyond the walls, in brilliant light, we gather where we were torn, incompletely, from each other.

—Lucas Paulson: Confused and Frustrated