Title is a lie. I wrote this drabble to let some feels out on a night I was feeling depressed, and with nothing else than Apollinaire's poetry on my mind. So you get it, there may be no actual sense.
I always write in my native language first, then translate into English after, so there may be some mistakes in my writing. What, no one's perfect. So if you find any and tell me, I will be forever grateful !
His name is Berwald, and it sounds weird. Or maybe not, it all depends of what everyone is thinking.
Berwald sounds nice as the final word of a tortuous sentence, the kind of sentence you can never be sure it makes sense even read backwards, forwards, in a mirror, after searching all the possible references to try to find the sense.
Himself is tall and gorgeous, one meter eighty-five, a nice size for his sixteen years of age. However, this size caused him trouble, as he was afraid he couldn't find himself capable of entering the small cage with such thick barrels that faced him at the end of the corridor. But he had to enter anyway, as it was the only possible outcome for anyone who had stepped this far into the darkness. Too far from the only window at the other end, which drops a single beam of light on the metallic floor of the cage. No one can look back, it's forbidden, the window is too close to be looked upon.
Berwald sounds like the name of a dead tree in the middle of a hole of ashes capable of swallowing you like shifting sands. Everyone knows it's there, but no one dares to approach.
Before he realizes, he finds himself into the cage, locked and able to stand up. Naked, as well, the sun lights up the blond hairs of his intimate parts. A nice size for his eighteen years of age. Does the corridor have doors, exits ? If it does, a random faint-hearted child or even adult - there's people like this everywhere anyway - could lose in one single well-placed glimpse their way to the gates of eternal innocence, the ones everyone would die to reach, a crazy delirium also named as Heaven. Berwald is not a Christian. The only gates he knows are those of his cage and he could not care less about of how many souls he would burst the innocent eyes.
However he never sleeps. Nor moves. He feels like he's falling free the kinetic energy keeping him from doing a single gesture, and the wind, as a sharp rasor blade whipping his eyelashes, keeping him from closing them.
Sometimes, the wallpaper gives a glimpse of the shadow of his desires.
An eclipse. A brief whispering that reaches the extent of a cry, and the only automatism that can make him react. Then, he stands up, and cries as well, without hearing his own voice. But yelling is too tiring to get out of it without falling asleep. So he sinks into slumber again, waiting for the next eclipse. The last one was quite a long time ago, too long, he thinks.
Berwald, it's a rugged rope strained by time that stopped waiting for someone to take it down from the gallows.
People say he has waited for too long, and wonder what could he still be waiting for. Like they speak about this man with dried-out hair, in some legend coming from a faraway foreign country, who used to breathe only the smoke of his zoot and used the colour of the sunset beneath the sea to wash his eyes.
Berwald, this is the name of this man locked up in his cage since the accident that costed his best friend's life. People who knew both of them repeat his name was Tino, and that they were way more than best friends. But they have to avoid speaking about it in front of Berwald, for he almost stands up in his bed when he hears the name, and it becomes too hard to calm him down after that. At least, his mental state is not made of a murderous instinct, doctors say cases like that already happened, and they say with a smile they want to try to avoid using sedatives on someone who is obviously not a danger for the medical staff and the visitors. Of course, that's painful, that's especially painful for close family, friends, supporters, everyone trying to glance inside the cage.
But that's almost imperceptible for the one inside the cage.
What could a caged bird think of anyway ?
Thanks for reading !