All entries for Wednesday 17 October 2007

Box

People put me here. Not for my sake, for theirs’. They thought that they needed something like me. I am a mediator of dialogue. The middle-man, when face-to-face conversation is either impossible or maybe just too destructive to what must be said. My cuboid frame holds up transparent panels allowing people to glance into me, but they also keep the elements from molesting whoever is within. Ordinary machines are ambivalent. They don’t offer protection, most are unnecessary. I however, am like an inanimate mother. Speechless, still, but able to provide a womb in which conversation is incubated. Upon entry, people impregnate me with their presence, and I in turn nurture their thoughts until emotion is birthed into speech.

        Did they make me maternal? I embrace even the ugliest of my children. Not blinded by sentimental subjective love, but liberated through our intimate bond to a place of perfect objective tolerance. In me, joys are begun and ceased, lives are continued and ended. I amplify the calls of their voices. Dozens, hundreds, possibly thousands of miles away I ensure my children are heard. I will not allow them to be silenced for they are my voice. I have no mouth. I am at once lifeless, but vicariously alive as life and lives pass through me.

        He was laughing. Laughing is good I have heard. He hurt me whilst he did it, smashing my sides with lumbering frame. Cursing and laughing in a slurred hysterical tone he ripped me open, leaving me incomplete, my womb torn asunder. His nasal-toned confusion meanders into the night. I can still be looked into, but I can no longer embrace. His laugh is twisted.

She was laughing. Laughing is good they tell each other. Dialling numbers to relay convictions is healthy, makes them human to be able to make themselves known to each other. She tuts at my injury says she’ll call again, but mutters something under her breath about the bitch on the other end of the line. Her laugh is hollow.

Is her laugh is put on; because now I’m open I can no longer encapsulate her talk? Outside influences force her to feign happiness. I would never make her fake, but I have let her down. I have been violated and cannot offer her what she needs.

Laughter is in the voice of the laughing. Hers and his were bastardised forms of joy. One too busy pleasing others, the other too busy pleasing himself. I cannot see, but I can hear. I cannot speak, but I can listen. You talk through me as if I am not there, but I care deeply for you. I am not one of you, but I see that people are alone together. I hope I help relieve that burden.

: 17 Oct 2007 00:45 |  Tags: 3 Icw Joshua Week Wells |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem