My new favourite obsession and the score to the movie they’re going to make about me when I’m gone. Vain, I am

GHOST LOVE SCORE – Nightwish

We used to swim the same moonlight waters
Oceans away from the wakeful day

My fall will be for you
My love will be in you
If you be the one to cut me
I`ll bleed forever

Scent of the sea before the waking of the world
Brings me to thee
Into the blue memory

My fall will be for you
My love will be in you
If you be the one to cut me
I will bleed forever

Into the blue memory

A siren from the deep came to me
Sang my name my longing
Still I write my songs about that dream of mine
Worth everything I may ever be

The Child will be born again
That siren carried him to me
First of them true loves
Singing on the shoulders of an angel
Without care for love n` loss

Bring me home or leave me be
My love in the dark heart of the night
I have lost the path before me
The one behind will lead me

Take me
Cure me
Kill me
Bring me home
Every way
Every day
Just another loop in the hangman`s noose

Take me, cure me, kill me, bring me home
Every way, every day
I keep on watching us sleep

Relive the old sin of Adam and Eve
Of you and me
Forgive the adoring beast

Redeem me into childhood
Show me myself without the shell
Like the advent of May
I`ll be there when you say
Time to never hold our love

My fall will be for you
My love will be in you
You were the one to cut me
So I`ll bleed forever

I have been on the fringes of Sri Lankan metal politics for nearly a decade. If I were to say it’ll be a sad day when a musician gives into petty power-politics and forgets his reason for being, then everyday would be a sad day for ‘pure Sri Lankan metal’.

I’m going to tell you my Stigmata story & my view of them over the last decade. I won’t go into the obvious & give you the history of the band that you all know, so I hope I’m able to bring a fresh perspective to the party.

My association with the Sri Lankan metal scene began way back in 2000 when Stigmata were just coming into the scene, I think. I started going for gigs at 80 Club where in the midst of the Kreb’s Cycle types, a group of youngsters called Stigmata were just beginning to come into their own.

A couple of years later while helping direct a school play, I heard a couple of the boys jamming to what sounded like this amazing melody during practices one day. I was instantly drawn to it. Nevermore to feel the pain, the heart collector sang. Nevermore indeed. Apparently Stigmata were covering it and it was all the rage. I downloaded the lyrics and within a week I had listened to the entire Dead Heart in a Dead World album. The first modern day metal album that I connected with. I was always more a classic Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Queen, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, The Doors kinda girl until then. Maybe with the likes of Sabbath and Judas Priest thrown in for good measure, on occasion. I would go for gigs once in a way but never until that point had I listened to a metal album in its entirety and fallen in complete lust.

Needless to say I got the group of boys to take me to a Rock Saturday. I had heard Stigs a few times after that first time at 80 Club including at On-Stage. I heard their rendition of Andura that night and I was mind blown. They were still so young and yet so confident, bringing something original to the table every time I heard them. There were other bands at the time too. Taunt. Soul Skinner. Whirlwind. Tapas. And others whose names escape me. Some pretty darn good in their own way. Some not so much. Each had a following. Some were even venomously referred to as Stigmata Pataw. But when Stigmata took the stage, everyone would listen. They always sounded better. Tighter. Influenced by the right sound, lyrically topical & relevant, but most of all, talented. Not to say the others weren’t. Stigmata were just more so.

The people I made friends with were from other bands. Some are still my friends to date. We sit down occasionally over a drink or spliff and talk about the Rock Saturday days. Problem is, that’s all we do. I’ve done my share of what I can for them. Design lighting for gigs, stage sets, promote them, compeer, type out their proposals, sober them up when they were too high to go home and helped them nurse their hangovers the next day with steaming hot cups of Milo. They would come over with guitars and jam at my place. I would sit in the studio while they would record their originals and give them my 2 cents worth. But what has happened to those bands that were on a mission to give Stigmata a run for their money? I’m truly disappointed. If they were on a mission, why not take the Avis route and try harder instead of caving in to play for 3,000 bucks a piece at some hotel lounge? Like I said, the people in these bands are my friends and through the years and because of their opinions, I must admit with some sense of shame that I was swayed by them, not bothering to ask Stigmata if what they were saying was true. So I started to dislike them on site. At least on the outside. Within, there was this undeniable sense of acceptance that they were good. Really good.

There was something essentially beautiful about the core melodies of tracks like Love Lies Bleeding, Sylvia and so many more others. But somehow they don’t seem to have pushed their limits and seen where they could go with their music. I can’t say that about Stigmata. I love my friends but not the bullshit they’ve fed me through the years. And I will say this to their faces as well. They sold out. Stigmata didn’t. Obviously they didn’t have the conviction, nor the staying power to have lasted a decade. Correction. Not just lasted. Stigmata have got better. With every gig they’ve played and every album they released.

For reasons best known to my twisted little head, I turned my back on metal for many years. The music and the memories were connected to a bad time in my life and I think I let the music take the fall for my dark days. I should have known better. The last gig I attended was a Stigmata one. The album launch of Silent Chaos Serpentine. That was years ago. On the darkest of days a little Nevermore would creep into my playlist but that would be it. And then this year, something amazing happened. I went for a gig. A relatively new friend’s band was playing and so I thought I’d go. It felt so damn good to hear the drums thundering in my gut and the guitars playing pucks with my ears. I head-banged after years and the morning after sore neck felt like I was coming home. I remembered smoky days in the pit, sometimes on my knees, on the verge of snapping my neck. I can’t describe how good it was to feel that way again. One thing note worthy; there were very few women around back then. It’s nice to see so many more of them around. Metal is no more a sausage fest & I for one am glad. J

Since then I’ve been to 2 other gigs, including The Killing Joke. Someone asked me at the gig; just before Stigs began to play Do you really like Stigmata? I mean aren’t they slightly overrated? I smiled back and unashamedly said I love them. They are the main reason I’m here.

It has by far been one of the best gigs I’ve attended in years. The sad thing was the audience. I expected more. It was a Stigmata gig for fucks sake! Where the hell were you when they brought the house down? Where were you when they played music not only from their own past, but music that was a part of shaping who you are today? Where were you when they played their new numbers, displaying how much they’ve evolved and grown in the last decade? Where the fuck were you?

Strangely enough, I realized that so many Stigs tracks are imbedded in some forgotten corner of my head. Voices, for instance. I woke up the morning after the Killing Joke and I heard Suresh singing Daddy, Daddy… in my head. When they started playing My Malice from the Silent Chaos Serpentine album at the gig, I started singing peel the flesh off my bone, slowly condone, so I may crumble away alone and I didn’t even realize that I was mouthing the words until I was half way into the song.

You don’t have to like Suresh to know the man and his music are intrinsically interconnected elements in equal parts. The same goes for the rest of the band. Besides Tenny, I’ve never really taken the time to get to know the rest of them. It’s a darn shame, come to think of it. The little time I’ve spent with them reminds me of how like-minded we are in some ways. I was on my way to a Rock Saturday gig when I got a call informing me that someone as close as a twin had just died in a bike accident thousands of miles away. My family was a mess trying to figure out how to bring the body down for the funeral in the midst of letting the tragedy of it sink in. Instead of turning around & going home, I opted to go for the gig anyway. I cried all the way in the car and it took me a while to get myself together and walk in, but when I got there and when Stigmata started to play, I was fine. During their entire set, I was fine. To date I will be eternally grateful to them for that. I’ve mourned to their music, made love to it and healed with it. And I never realized it until I sat down to write this piece. It’s strange how the music playing in the background during some of the darkest or most intense milestones in your life will stay with you in your sub conscience until they’re ready to be played again.

The Killing Joke was evidence that Stigmata are still the tightest fucking band around. The most original. The only ones who knew where they wanted to go and opted stayed true to that vision. Too many of us have dreams and let them be just that; dreams. It’s the chasers who deserve the applause, not the dreamers.

So, to Suresh, Tenny, Andrew, Javeen & Tharaka, I just want to say that you can go ahead and have the last laugh, because the joke certainly wasn’t on you.

Simply Fab!

For more, visit www.lizzythelezzy.com

Obligations | by an3n

You know I think there’s something grammatically wrong with saying “I feel obligated”. An obligation is not a human emotion. I feel sadness, joy, love, anger. But how can I feel an obligation?

Too much of the world seems to run on it and not on real emotions. I’ve been quiet for a while because I’ve been hibernating. Off from work for a few days. When you’re in the thick of things sometimes it’s too difficult to see what’s going on. When you stand outside of it and look in, it’s easier to see how twisted things are. How twisted even you become as a person without even realizing that you’ve got there.

My question to myself and the world at large, is why we let a word like obligation rule so many things in our life without stopping to realize it. For some of us we’re so far into doing things and being certain types of people based on how obligated we are that it may cause too much damage to try to rectify things. People get married out of obligation. For instance, some people do it when they get a girl pregnant. The wedding becomes a big cover-up, the story goes to say that the baby came early and eventually mom and dad settle down into a pseudo life of parenthood and picket fences. None of it has to do with how the guy really feels about the girl. It has to do with obligation.Doing the right thing. By the world at large, by other people. Never by yourself or your heart.

I made a friend recently in the process of him being 2 months away from marriage. In a few weeks of me knowing him, he called his wedding off. And I have never been prouder of a person for standing by their heart. The getting to know him was purely coincidental, so please bring back those wondering minds to the topic at hand and let’s move on…

He loved her in his own way, he smiled at her innocence and naiveté but somewhere deep inside he knew that she wasn’t the woman who stirred his soul. Eventhough he knew being with the one who did do so wouldn’t be a sure thing, he opted not to settle. He opted not to go through with things that would change his life as he knew it just because of some obligation. He realized that he was not only doing himself long-term harm, but also damaging the life of someone he cared about deeply. He knew breaking her heart now would be better that breaking her soul later. And trust me I know what it is to have a broken soul. Disillusionment will only be on the 3rd page of the glossary if you want me to write Oprah’s book club, best-seller, pseudo ‘self-help’ book on it.

His soul is intact. And so is his optimism. I don’t think I would have been able to say that about him if he didn’t change his mind. I’m not being a psychic when I say that, merely someone who has seen too many people not live by the light they see at the eleventh hour. Simply because of OBLIGATION. Some of them are brave enough to say fuck it to the “what will people think” attitude, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t still follow through with things because of obligation.

They don’t feel obligated. They ARE obligated because they are subconsciously brought up on a false sense of what life is meant to be. We’re taught to be selfless. True. And I have no issues with that. But it’s more about how you live between those lines that give the next generation the perspectives that they tend to live by and pass on to the next. That vicious, vicious cycle has cheated too many generations to let it continue noh?

The woods are lovely, dark & deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep
- Robert Frost, Stopping by woods on a snowy evening

Radha-Krishna | by Miasmicnectar

Radha feels the thin film of sand quietly grind and shuffle beneath her feet as she moves across the cold cement floor. The household was quiet as she steals away from it in the dead of night. She had nothing more to lose now. Even her demons had let her down this time around.

She invokes her namesake as she quietly open the creaky old, steel gate, asking for blessings on her journey. Sounding almost like a plea, from one woman in love to another. She lifts the edge of the tattered sari she chose to wear for inconspicuousness and runs into the night, almost flying as the cold air tries to slap her awake from this maddened trance. But she stops for nothing and no one in her determined dance of limbs and hair, with her destination firmly in sight.

She passes the old millers dam and remembers a childhood gone by too soon for her to have the answers she would need on this journey tonight. Moonlight flickering on the shallow pool of water, they would dance until they would hear voices calling them home. Just two innocents, just a girl and a boy melting into their reflections, not realizing that fate would lead them on a cruel path from that moment on. That was 14 years ago. She would go on to marry him and stand by him and carry his children in the pit of her belly for nine months at a time. She would continue her life of quiet desperation because she chose familiarity over fear.

Not on this night, though. Tonight she was free. Heading towards a promise unfulfilled. Towards betrayal and discovery. She was running away from the lie she was living, from her inability to admit that she had made a mistake. She was running from the safety of cold arms to the warmth of unknown ones. She could not survive the long, lonely nights alone. Her one weakness. The fatal flaw in the grand design of her life. The one the goddess didn’t posses. The other Radha was patient, never knowing when Krishna would return to her. Living through the pain of him marrying other women and still continuing to love. The love struck Job of Hinduism.

Some creature of the night shrieks and flies over her head, making her pause for a moment in shock and awe. She was at the bridge at the end of the village now. Beads of cold sweat began to form as a result of the clashing heat within and the cold night around her. The air hits the liquid clinging to her body to cool her down as wild strands of hair now flicker in the breeze, all seeming to head in one direction now; the direction she came from. The long tresses he so loved. The untameable locks her babies would cling to as she suckled them.

She hears a shuffling in the shrubbery nearby and startled, she turns around hoping it was him. It wasn’t. She loved how his dark skin would glow in the night, almost blue under the moonlight. Her Krishna. The one she couldn’t wait for unlike the goddess who was ready to wait lifetimes and more. It was now or never ever. She couldn’t go back. Wouldn’t. How could she, when she had finally tasted the heat and passion of this god-like man, go back to the mundane, coldness of a man who had no clue how to express his love? But what of your children? A voice from within seemed to be asking. They are his. Not mine. I carried them, birthed them and handed them over as his possessions. You are making excuses Radha. She sighs, not knowing how to answer her own questions. She had made a decision, she would stick to it.

Over an hour had passed since she came to the place he had promised to come take her from. The medicine man who had walked into her village, making all her contemporaries swoon inwardly. None would dare let it show, but Radha knew. The flushed cheeks, the half closed eyes. He would talk to them and they would listen to nothing. He would talk of his adventures through the world and they would sit there, listening to his voice, enwrapped in his postures. Imagining. Always imagining. She would not merely listen. She would hear the words. And he had chosen her. Over all others, it was her bed he had come to. Her arms he collapsed into in the heat of desire, longing to name every lock of her hair and every part of her soul. Longing to claim it as his own. And now she was here to let him. To let him take her where he will, to be his companion and lover on adventures still unnamed.

She bundled up her sari upto her thighs and squats on the floor. The noiseless night was no companion for an impatient woman. She drew careless shapes in the dirt with her fingers, letting in reach into her nails, blackening them, all the while imagining what it would be like to walk through this world with him.

And so she waited. And waited. And waited.

The Missing Sandwich is proud to present her first guest writer, with a stunner post at that! I know you usually read him over at the black lullaby, but our very own author, ad-man & actor exraordinaire has written a post for my blog which I will share with you shortly. First the schpeel : this was done on a brilliant LSD trip which resulted in him writing about the paradoxical beauty & torture of love. Without much ado…. please join me as I present AUTOMOBILE!

You make me feel like an automobile and I know I must be tripping balls to think an automobile has feelings and the fact that I’m calling it an automobile is just so fucking lame. But that’s not even the point of the damn story. Yes there is a story. So I’m sitting here getting high with my friends, watching the moon (I even howled at it secretly when I was out on the balcony by myself), getting, high, did I!… say that already? The punctuation, marks; in this extremely long sentence are quite… trippy… yea. Anyway, back to the story. So yea, um, I was thinking about the kinds of cars that guys just fall in love with. Please be of the understanding that I’m talking about a car here and this is not some twisted metaphor that means something more. Right. So back to the car.

You ask any man’s man who his baby is and he’ll show you his wheels, but not the ones that take him to work, oh no, she’s far too important for that. It’s not the ones he goes partying with, she’s way better than that. It’s not even the ones he takes on those special weekends out of town, no, she’s too damned good for that.

She’s the engine he ignites when he wants to give the rest of the world a big ‘fuck you!’ She’s the gear he shifts into when he explores the part of himself that no one else will ever get to see. She’s the leather he sinks into when he thinks no one else is watching. She is his infinite statement of beauty. That is why she can be explored by him alone. That is why she can be experienced by him alone. With her he can be the boy that the adult world won’t let him be. With her he can be the raw lover his wife won’t let him be. With her he can be exactly who he is inside and not be ashamed of it. She is his release, she is his easel, the one on which he paints his joy and his love. She loves him no matter what and he knows it and he also knows that she’ll be true to him till her last fucking breath.

But he knows that this world is much more than just her. He knows about responsibilities and other grownup things. He knows that he’s got to leave this earth with something more than just a car to his name. So he keeps her locked away in the darkness, so she won’t distract him from the dumb charade he calls life. But when he wants to live, to really, really, really live… (pause for dramatic effect) that’s when he takes her out. He takes her on the spin of a fucking lifetime and then locks her up again until he’s got enough time on his hands to appreciate her for the fucking beauty she is. That’s his baby. That’s how you make me feel.

And now you know why you make me feel like a fucking automobile.

I can never write when I want to. I went home last night intending to write a story. When the words come, they’re when I least expect it. And even then, the burst of inspiration doesn’t last long and I have a strong urge to finish it up and never leave whatever I’m writing to get back to at a later date. Add to that, I never edit or review my work. This is probably why I’ll never be the kind of writer that I envisioned I would become someday.

So I realized that I hadn’t given you an update on the various goings on in my life since the move to the new house, which I highly doubt you’ll be interested in reading. I’m opting to shove it down your throat, none-the-less.

The most important thing is that I miss Stitch & MoCuishle. It’s been over 2 weeks since I’ve seen them and my heart breaks so many times a day when I think of them. They used to be the last thing I saw when I went to sleep and the first thing that greeted me when I opened my eyes every morning. I need to bring them over to spend a night with me one day soon. There’s nothing like sinking your face into Stitch’s silky coat at the end of a long day.

The great Dharmasiri Bandaranayake seems to think quite a bit of me it seems. He invited a friend of mine and I to perform in a Sinhala play with him. A classic satire of his from the 70’s which he is remaking in November. Needless to say, it has been a very different experience. It’s almost a complete 180 from the English theatre I am used to. Hopefully I’ll be able to pull off the performance because it is an absolute honour to be invited into his fold and be cast in a role without an audition, merely based on one previous performance he managed to catch the video of.

In terms of work, my office has turned into a factory. I churn out ideas and copy as though I was making hoppers. As a result my output hasn’t been brilliant. Some ideas are good, some are ok and some are just downright shit. If I had the luxury of time to think about one campaign at a time, the situation would be quite different. As it stands I have 4 jobs in hand!

I opened a Twitter account in April and “tweeted” (is that what you call it?) once about Attia in Rome. I suddenly got the urge to tweet again and I’ve been on a roll since a few days ago. Nothing of substance there either. Some random things about a Snuffleupagus and others about work. Following the right people is the key I hear, so I’ve been finding people who inspire me which seems far more interesting that updating my own excrement. Stephen Fry has proved to be a very interesting follow I must say!

And then the beautiful Cinderella bestowed this award on me called loyal friend and reader and now I am to name five bloggers to give this same award to. So here goes…

RD, for finding the occasional bit of substance amidst my blogging madness and becoming a friend in the process.

Brandix, for inspiring me to become a blogger. This blog exists because he introduced me to it and it has become one of the best outlets for my twisted mind.

Dishi, for writing from her heart and speaking from her heart as a person and a blogger. Her writing moves me and so does she as a person.

St. Fallen for reading me from the point he became a blogger himself. And along the way, I’m really glad we’ve also become friends.

And finally to Gyppo, whose posts make me feel like I’m in a scene from Ground Beneath Her Feet. She writes the things in my head, only she puts them across better.

There are many more I would like to give these out to, but alas I am limited to only 5. To my chosen 5, go ahead and knock yourself out picking another 5 yourself! (That is if you want to, of course)

That’s it in the life and times of the missing sandwich. Besides finding my first grey hairs and going into a state of manic depression interspersed with the occasion bout of OCD.

I’m terribly sorry this post became such a mixed fruit salad of things. Enjoy the weekend y’all!

I have a new friend you see. New in the sense that most of my really close ones have known me for at least a decade. I have a best friend who’s been a part of my life for 20 years or more in fact. But this one & I are different. We met maybe 4 years ago and because of something he said one random night at a gathering of friends, I looked him in the eye and said “let’s talk”. It turned out to be a night laced with half a bottle of brilliant tequila gold. We finished the bottle and in the process emptied our tear ducts as well I think. In just one night, we realized that we were kindred spirits.

And to date we have still had those random nights, a play in which we acted in together, a few vacations, one overseas and the others to Unawatuna. And many, many nights of sleepovers with soul music, excellent intoxicants, DVDs galore and conversation that feed on the inner workings of our twisted minds.

Our friendship has progressed from depressing tequila teardrops to joyous Long Island laughs as we both acknowledge how far we have come in such a short span of time. We get happily high on copious amounts of Long Island Iced Tea and chortle about the years gone by. How different we are from the people we first met each other as, and how we can still relate to the new, grown-up versions of our former selves.

We have come a long way from the multitudinous obstacles that life has insisted must be thrown in our path. We have come through the fire, so to speak and we are both better people for it. The obstacles still keep coming, but we jump over them or even use them like stepping stones now. It’s good to have people you can hurt with, because when the laughter comes, it is so much sweeter. In a very recent conversation we had in fact we realized that the strongest of human bonds are forged as a result of shared pain and not joy.

We have evolved from lonely children to confident lovers of ourselves and found it to be the utterly selfish path to our happiness at last. We both share many things in common like our shared passion for Wicca and theatrics. But we also share a common thread of faith. We have both been stripped both voluntarily and forcefully of our childish notions of religion and church. We talked the other day of how we have nothing left but one tiny thread that connects us with our god. But stripped of all the man made notions, we realized that it is the one thing that no one can take from us. Because it is the way we have built our own personal beliefs and relationships with the great one.

We’ve taken our raincoats off and are ready for our days in the sun and even ready to dance in the rain when the downpours come. For, there is a time for everything. Now maybe our time to laugh with Long Island’s but we know a time to cry again with sad, sad tequila tears will come again. It’s the cycle we have come to accept and expect. But we’re grown now, and we’re ready for the unknown.

Everyone should be blessed with a friend like this, I think. Someone who doesn’t need to necessarily share all of your history or years of knowing you, someone who you don’t need to be in constant contact with for reassurances, but simply someone who can see into your soul & find a kindred there.

Vampire | by Blood Lover 03

You spend you life on a manic search for something to desperately make sense of your life and you tend to occasionally look back and wonder if it was even worth it.

Your fruitless searches beat you down, your shoulders browned by the garish heat of an angry sun that won’t let you dance in the moonlight.

Life was never meant for creatures of the night. Creatures that lurk in the darkness, waiting to pounce on happiness. To grab it. Possess it. For surely that must be the only way to have it. An elusive something that shies away from your blood lust.

And then when you’re not searching and stop for a little respite, life starts to happen to you. It’s when you stop hoping, stop wondering when meaning will dawn that it comes and grabs you by pure accident.

The possessor becomes the possessed. You find yourself in a carnal, primal dance to the rhythm of some ancient drum that seems to have found a home in your heartbeat.

You wake up and finally you can walk out into the light again. And all you feel is the soft warmth of the sun, the mellow tickles of the breeze.

You finally hear every little sound that comes together like a perfectly synced orchestra and you wonder why you didn’t hear them all this time.

The taste of blood no longer lingers in your mouth. The hunt is over. The hunted is now the hunter and you have let go and given in.

Closing Time | by Mr Izalcs

The last box in the hallway is almost full. Just a few more love letters to add and bank statements to throw away. The sorting is almost done. How could a sticky note with a corny one liner decide to hold such weighty memories within? She fears the very last of them, finally thrown carelessly into the box would make it too heavy for even the burly movers when they finally came to move her memories. She couldn’t bear to carry them out herself along with her already laden heart.

And yet the sadness is not for the memories. As good as they were. Made in moments of purposeful desire and unexpected connectivity. In the most unlikely of places. Many in a dark hole, somewhere in a lost corner off Galle Road with an Iron Maiden album cover painted on the ceiling. Others in a red brick building that housed their coming together in the midst of early morning chats, his mum’s pol sambol & egg sandwiches and countless sticky notes. One that convinced the child in her to take an adult plunge into what she still debates was love. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. He writes it out neatly and places it in front of her as though he had come up with all by himself and reading it, she instantly knows that come what may, she would succumb to the butterfly kisses he would place on her nose and the quiet conversations late into the night over countless glasses of arrack and coke. Being able to share yourself so completely with a cocky stranger shouldn’t be so easy because it makes you believe more than you should. And years later it finally hits you. The distance you go, the heights you reach, all ultimately leave you with very little to take away with you. Like T.S. Eliot said, these were just the burned out ends of smoky days.

The real sadness is for the person who she used to be. The little girl who was so brutally murdered. The dreams she was able to dream. The chase that was so charged that it would almost set off sparks, leaving hairs on edge, crackling with electricity. The days when she thought she knew what would make her happy. The knowledge that she had never felt more at home with the most unlikely person and how she luxuriated in the feel of it, even during their dark days together. The countless arguments should have taught them both a lesson instead of fueling them into thinking that it was just as a result of an overdose of passion.

The sadness is for the children she brought up as though they had been birthed of her. And in a way they were. They shared her soul and she shared theirs. The sadness is for the teardrops shed over their silky coats as they cling to her in confusion, knowing their mother is sad and not knowing how to ease her pain for the first time in their lives.

She tapes the last box shut, wondering if she’ll ever be able to find herself again, if the childlike optimism would ever return. Or if she was to finally accept that all of this had turned her too bitter to be able to awaken that dormant ability for infinite joy again. Death must also feel like this. The inability to cry, the lump in the throat, the urge to scream. Hope. Such a dirty little word for grown ups.

Unpacking the old memories would be difficult in a new home. Maybe she would just keep some of the boxes unpacked. Opening them, only when she was on the edge of falling again, if it was even possible. Opening them to remind her of what would await her. Like a warning. God forbid that it fuel her on into thinking that it was possible to reach those heights again. Silly girl that she was, she knew the possibility of hope being able to escape through the cracks in her heart. That frightening ability to once more let someone else that far into those darkened spaces and places within.

The boxes were ready to go and she could hear the movers scream orders at each other outside. She glares at her empty bedroom feeling a strange combination of numbness & borderline hysteria. One last shrug for all that was lost. She picks up a final package & walks out of the door into the morning sun with a brave smile now plastered on her face. If she ever came close to knowing love, this was probably it. If she ever permitted herself silly thoughts of babies and picket fences, it was with him.

Maybe he was right from the very beginning.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

She has no clue who she wants taking her home ever again. But after nearly a decade, it was finally closing time.

Closing Time | by Pedroza