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Pain
by Steven Craig
Steven sat there, stunned. Nothing in his body moved, not even his heart. His eyes stared at the corner of the table where the paper lay. He just looked, long, coldly, feelingless.... the blood left his cheeks, the numbness in his back, the gripping of his hands upon the chair arms as though in the death throws...
No, there was feeling, he wanted to cry. The tear was in the right corner of each eye, but the cold was too deep to let it out. The edge of his tongue was held tightly between his teeth, His breathing was now slow, shallow. But still he sat there stunned. His hands, those beautiful hands that the artist so dearly love to paint, had no useful function. They could not save him. They could not make it right again. His legs that had saved him time and again from danger, were powerless to help him now. The body was in full and desperate retreat. This was too much, the loneliness brought out by her desire to love him despite it all, was consuming. Steven knew he had to do something, he had to get out of that mood, that reminder of hopeless despair, the endless, dark, dank, lost and forgotten hole of a lovers death.
He looked up at the wall, and slowly rolled his eyes across the objects on the wall, the painting of the little girl feeling the loss of loneliness, the prancing Chinese horse in its golden frame, the gargoyle siting in bemused merriment at this crisis, the zebra mask, the painting of the shore birds... slowly, he came back to the here and now. Slowly, like a cat stretching out of a safe spot to sleep on a cold winters day, Steven came back to what was life.
He swallowed once, hard. He drew in a breath and let it out. He got up from his chair, and walked past the aquarium, the fireplace, and slowly walked up the stairs to the far bedroom. There, he laid himself down upon the bed and clutched at her pillow. The scent of her was still upon it. He laid his cheek upon the cool linen, and found the cold, the tears removed at last.
It was a gentle rain that night, not a raging storm, but a gentle rain through the night.
06/24/2006 Posted on 06/24/2006
Copyright © 2024 Steven Craig
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by A. Paige White on 07/09/06 at 02:21 AM This was very gripping. The first paragraph almost had me in tears. You poured yourself into this write and it's obvious and powerful. Great job of expressing the moment. |
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