abandonedamerica.org: the day i died

the day i died

the day i died was so very ordinary -
it seems that it should have been filled with a parade of coincidences,
things easily noted in retrospect, but it was not. there was
only the way the hollow afternoon sunlight
crawled acoss the faded wallpaper, the steady limp
of sickly clouds across a sterile blue sky,
the buzz of flies and a certain weight about my chest
that was undefinable but far from uncommon.
i made pancakes for breakfast, and ate in silence.
then, i washed the dishes in silence too,
unaware that the places i set them on the drying rack
were where they would remain for the next ten years.
after that i spoke on the phone with friends
about things of such a tragic lack of substance
that i would be ashamed to even repeat them - they were all
regurgitated banalities and stillborn thoughts.
i left with no words of sagely advice and wisdom,
no heartfelt declarations of love or frienship,
no prophecies or messages of hope and courage.
i lay on my unmade bed for an afternoon nap
and stared at the ceiling, where there was
a steadily growing spiderweb i had yet to remove,
and i decided to wait for the spider to die before
destroying his work. my breathing steadily deepened, and soon
i was dreaming of all manner of magical and marvellous things:
cities too fantastic to describe with words, other worlds
where i did great and important things and saw many miraculous sights.
sometime while i was there my heart stopped beating,
and the spider continued his masterpiece uninterrupted.

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