Elegy

"I am cold tonight." — Rorschach

.*.*.*.

The fondest of memories are deeply embedded in the heart of secrecy. Unwritten, untold—unlike these deformed thoughts he is used to pouring out onto page after page. Inconsistencies shaped into confessions by a poet who never dreams like dreamers do.

He cares not for the Antarctic cold but a city struggling to keep afloat in the endless pelter. There lies comfort in the absence of God, purity in the imperfections of humanity and strength in the wake of loneliness. Like blood over water streaming through gutters, he has drifted further into oblivion.

Water runs down and deep to where bodies of fallen compatriots rest beneath the soil. Not a tear is shed as he kneels by the grave of a man he barely knows yet respected. Emotions unmoved, kept dry under the black and white layer of breathing skin, of contradicting beliefs, of denial.

And somewhere within this honourable sea of crosses and broken headstones, he knows his father is with them.

Pagliacci shares his peace.

He bows his head in remembrance of the righteous.

Then the moment slips away to return here, in a panorama of snow, where he has reached the edge of the world and the end of his tether.

He tears the skin off his face and bids farewell to the warmth of tears dampening the black and blue of bare human flesh.

A god, as bright and glowing as scattered light in the sky, waits in sympathy. Fate seems cruel even to a deity—the god of smaller things—controlled by otherworldly forces unknown even to its own elevated consciousness.

God hesitates, seeing how human emotions are melting rapidly in the cold. There shouldn't be a need to kill or confiscate the glint of reverie reflected in his eyes: a memory filled with rain and the smell of roses.

The mind wanders as it pleases even in the face of death and god feels obliged to follow.

Instead of blood, god sees the bright red garland resting peacefully against Pagliacci's tombstone. The lone visitor reaches for a rose in the rain. Conflicting thoughts fall quietly to rest as he ponders over the beauty of death.

As his body atomises in the falling snow, his soul becomes immortal. Like a thorn left untrimmed, it remains to protect its flower long after the petals have all withered and gone.

God chooses to see him there again by Pagliacci's grave with a journal kept close to his heart and a single rose adorning the lapel of his coat.

Solitude becomes the path he walks on.

In the rain, god watches as he leaves.

He leaves.