I, Whom Time Abandoned

~ it’s all too familiar, you see ~

photograph by author

Enter.

Ah a bed in one corner.

Watch the walls

Empty

So

Alone

Somewhere in a

Pocket of darkness

A stranger in a stranger land.

Shiver

It is hot then cold.

There are the stacks

Books

Dead on battlegrounds of indifference.

Dust crawls, ants trudge

A tired infestation

Pulls tighter and tighter

Too spent to let go

Veins flow

As a naked light bulb blinds you

And exultant it watches you cringe.

Hide from pain, truth

And all that

Forces feelings so

Savagely upon you.

No ambuscades here —

All too familiar, you see

Whir of fan moves to a

Somnambulist dance of loose papers