"Come here, oh my star is fading
And I swerve out of control
And I swear I waited and waited
I've got to get out of this holeBut time is on your side
It's on your side now
Not pushing you down and all around
It's no cause for concernCome on, oh my star is fading
And I see no chance of release
And I know I'm dead on the surface
But I am screaming underneath
...
Stuck on the end of this ball and chain
And I'm on my way back down again
Stood on a bridge, tied to the noose
Sick to the stomach
You can say what you mean
But it won't change a thing
I'm sick of the secrets
Stood on the edge, tied to the nooseYou came along and you cut me loose"
- Amsterdam, by Coldplay
The hourglass had been violently spun
The sand was thrown wildly, carelessly,
The time tracked within now had neither depth nor meter
Time heals,
But if time is lost,
The sands becoming an ominous storm in an ever-spinning glass,
The recovery has no effect on the wounded,
It has no effect on the sand, unable to force gravity on it, force it to track time
The healing to only those who can be healed
Those who are affected by time
A half is never complete without its match
A half cannot be healed
Man can bear only so much pain
And each man his own limits
But rarely does life's misery pile so heavily on a man that he reaches his limit
But some do.
Some bear agony,
Suffering,
Defeat
He tries to fight through it
But in the dark storm of absent time
The constant pounding wind of tragedy will knock down the strongest man in its path.
The man is built a fighter
He is not muscular
He is not tall
He is not young and feisty
He is short,
Stocky,
His hair barely touched with grey
His face expressively lined with patience and blissful simplicity
All this a thin layer
Masking his true bravery and endurance
Masking his true soldier
The time around him slowly moved
He watched it from the endless depths of his own capsule within the glass,
Forever trapped in the moment of another man's death
The final, fatal blow to an already wounded comrade
Three years within the glass
Muffled voices, blurred faces appearing on occasion
Emerging from the grey sea of fog, swirling past on time's current
They tried to help, tried to breathe life back into him
But the glass was always between them,
Blocking all sound
He was a fighter
He threw himself violently at the barrier
Desperately trying to hear the muffled sounds of soothing voices
To cling to the calming advice of friend or stranger
But with each attempt at escaping the limbo in which he was trapped,
Dark sand filled the cavities of his body,
Choking him
Drowning him
Forcing him to face defeat over and over again
A half cannot be healed, ever
The awareness of the exact emptiness and volume of the empty space left can be reduced
But only with time
Without time, there is naught but an ever-bleeding wound
The fighter lost a half
The memory of a falling body forever seared in his mind
The other half had not jumped
It had not leapt
It had fallen,
A fall from grace and power
A fall from its grasp on reality
The reality of its own awareness of its other half
The one it would be leaving behind
There is no blame that can be put on the fallen half
It lost its grasp on its own importance to the whole
Lost touch on the balance it had created in its other's life
Never aware of the depth of its other's depression before they encountered one another
Before the final blow, even then the other half's eyes linger for too long
On its gun
Even the day they first were introduced, in the process of removing his laptop from his drawer,
His eyes rested on the gun for far too long
Always a fighter
Always staring the enemy in the eyes
But when the enemy is everywhere around you,
How can you track it's every movement?
It was not a sudden decision
It was the fault of an escalation of lethargy
It was
Another defeat, following
Another attempt
To break free
He wept helplessly
His sides quivered for the first time in the three years which moved past his enclosure
The pain
The absolute agony
The depth, stretching far beyond his body
The constant consciousness of that empty volume
The emptiness
The silence raging within his mind, white static covering any hope he could muster
The echo of the pain, his heart the very epicenter, resonating throughout and past his empty insides
His heart hung in his barren ribs, absolutely frozen in frigid misery,
Turning pallid and deathly colored with sadness
The equivalent of three years later
He accepted there would be no escape.
The ever-spinning hourglass encasing him
With raging, stinging sands
Continued its battle against its helpless captive
Shuddering against his own cold tears,
He found himself with a rope in hand
Of course, he had gotten it
When or where it came from, he didn't know
He always had it nearby
He was always ready
Wrapping
Pulling
A necklace of rope
A leash to the rafters
He wanted to fall
Fall
From grace
From reality
From his grasp on the balance of life
Fall from his empty body
His tormented soul
Fall into nothing
On the edge of a rooftop
On the edge of a table, moved for convenience
On the edge of release
His eyes closed, sealing and protecting his flooded eyes from the still-blowing sands
His heels still remained to the edge of the ledge,
Inches from escape
He let himself feel the unbearable throb of his heart
Just for a moment
His feet were freed from supporting his body
The necklace tightened around his neck, pulling against his weight
His eyes flew back open
His throat closed from the drowning sands
Horrible
Blissful
Spots of black, burning holes through his vision
Holes through reality
He was suddenly light
He was not free
A black angel supported his feet from below
Grey eyes of hope shattered the glass,
Pulling him back to life.