Ditto
Working in the ancient edifice,
it seemed that most of the offices
were perpetually vacant for some time,
their translucent-windowed doors tightly shut,
the light behind them invariably extinguished,
and behind the rippled glass of his own door,
he wondered if he was the only one left active
in this multi-storied labyrinth of repeating offices.
There was always, however,
the basketful of documents
to be scrupulously photocopied,
and from where they originated,
he was never entirely sure,
but a new batch was always there,
demanding to be duplicated,
and both the copies and the originals
were whisked away – always unseen by him,
and always replaced with even more to be processed.
And so it went for an interminable time
One day,
while in the copy room across the hallway,
he experienced again that peculiar sensation
he had been feeling lately,
a queer lightheadedness,
increasingly coupled to an illusion,
a brief vision - a sensation,
that he was becoming less tangible,
as if he was being drained of substance,
and he returned to his office
lethargically devoid of energy,
finding himself “all done in”.
It was another evening,
when he returned zombie-like to his desk,
that he heard the clack-clack of the copier,
and peering into the corridor,
he saw the “light-dark-light-dark” sweep of photo
lights
spilling into the vaulted hallway.
The machine whined down.
He observed no one exit the copy room,
but he had an impression of a diaphanous darkness,
the suggestion of a mobile shape,
crossing the width of the hallway.
It was the following evening
that he noticed the vacant office,
the one most adjacent to the copy room,
dimly illuminated behind its corrugated glass,
leading him to believe someone had been at the copier,
retiring back to that office.
Curiosity got the better of him.
The office remained silent,
so he tried the door – it was locked from the inside,
and he tried “binocularing” his eyes with hands,
trying to penetrate the translucency of the glazing,
trying to detect any movement,
the monogrammed wristband of his timepiece
metallically blazing a sound trail
in the ridges of the glass ...
... the occupant of the office,
hearing the noises in the hallway,
rose to investigate the disturbance,
glancing to the right & to the left
down the entire length of corridor,
and he gazed into the copier room,
not a soul in sight,
all was as usual,
his office seemingly the only one occupied.
He noted the time,
brushing back the monogrammed wristband.
There were documents on his desk
to be attended to – to be duplicated.
As he closed his door,
the copier across the hall clicked back into life,
warming-up,
softly idling through the waiting mode,
on standby,
ever ready.
Dwelling
On the topmost floor,
an amputee tossed and turned,
awaking to a terrible itch
in his surgically removed,
phantom of a leg.
On the second floor,
a deaf girl stirred in her sleep,
a persistent hollow ringing
in her once favored ear.
On the ground floor,
a lone mute catapulted erect,
the last dying echoes
of a protracted scream,
fading from the room.
And so this went on,
the house being vacant many years,
until early one morning,
outside a glassless window,
an ominous wrecking ball appeared,
speeding and increasing in size,
obliterating the curtainless aperture,
reducing the entire building swiftly
to a fractured rubble wasteland,
freeing dust spirits to the wind.
Laminar Flow
It appeared to be a corridor
in some ulterior office complex,
devoid of any independent furnishings,
what in the business they call “spartan” design,
numbered doors symmetrically spaced and placed
along each side of the passageway.
And after continuing forward,
through what seemed endless eons,
after passing rooms with numbers
astronomical in size and scope,
numbers so vast they were beyond imagination,
the traveler noticed the numerals resuming a more
human scale.
He slowed down to a halt
outside one particular room,
where contrary to being devoid of furnishings,
full-grown trees were sprouting through the floor,
trees so far advanced in age that they were fraught
with disease,
dying on each side of the approach to room 225.
And out from an open door,
the only open door in this universe of corridor,
the room vomited a stream of sluggish waste,
coursing something brackish between the trees,
infiltrating the trunks through contact.
And he had to wonder:
if he followed this drugged stream,
would it extend through the room,
only to exit the other side out into the corridor,
this same corridor,
crossing an infinity of other corridors,
eventually arriving where it all began?
Remains
"Someday,
I’m going to walk out that door,"
she said from the hospital bed,
pointing a trembling finger at the framed print
hanging above her sheathed frail feet.
It was a picture of an interior,
the closed front door to a country home,
sunlight streaming in rainbow patterns
through the small panes of beveled glass
that fitted the sidelights and transom fanlight,
the wisteria outside the rendered windows
in clinging cascades of gloriously violet bloom.
Things got progressively worse. She never did recover.
The following day,
while collecting her hospital effects,
the grandson noticed what he did not notice before:
sounds of dry crackling underfoot,
a scattering of withered wisteria petals
on the regulation linoleum floor,
and within the composition of the framed picture,
a slight sliver of light streaking downward.
The country door was slightly ajar.
Sidereal
Nighttime
and this persistent beacon of light,
twinkling above the southern horizon,
brighter than all the neighboring stars.
It’s difficult to believe that
I am looking at a star – a world – perhaps an entire
galaxy,
so far away that it appears to be a single point of
light,
millions of years gone,
eons dead.
And I have to wonder ...
Within the curvature of the universe,
is some unknown intellect
simultaneously scrutinizing the very light
reflected off the planet earth,
radiating steadfastly
across gulfs of time and space,
and am I not now,
at this very moment,
one million years deceased?