Patterned in Ebony

by Richard M. Ankers

I see patterns in the darkness, great swirls of black, they flow together like ink in water, separate and disperse. Chunks of reality dipped in obsidian dreams, these are my memories made manifest. I see them in the moment, reach out, but intangible, they slip away.

My life has been a jigsaw assembled out of nowhere. There was never a right and wrong way, just a way. One fitted the pieces together in hope, sat back, and then realised them dashed. The one constant was the darkness I swam through. My one friend was the luxurious silk of the unknown. This has been my everything. I will never leave.

Like an artist, I see what others cannot. The universal void is my untamed palette. I smooth the rough edges, polish them to endless curves, but it never lasts. With a finger for a brush, I paint my nocturnal images, eyes closed and heart wanting. They are more alive than me.

I feel it before I see it, hear it before it’s felt. This endless circle is a paradox from which I shall never wake. If I’ve ever awoken at all? I fear it, you see, the revelations and the certainty of things. I want not for resolutions, no detailed descriptions of life and lives and things. There is no beauty in the obvious, no mystery in the truth. A jewel lying dormant deep within the rock has so much to offer. Lay this precious commodity in the light, however, chisel and chip it into something it was never meant to be, set it in a ring or a crown for fools, and all you have is a ruined dream. The essence of the gem shall remain in the mountain, praying for the sedimentary layers to retrieve its body one day and return it from elsewhere it came.

I sit on a cliff overlooking the ocean, listening to the waves lapping beneath my feet. This reminds me of a time before life stood revealed, long before geology was even a word. There was no sun. The world needed no such illumination. Imagination ran rife, then: His, Mine, Theirs. Possibilities whirled through maelstroms of practising chaos. I was happy. We all were. There was never a requirement to cry.

It comes.

There’s a saffron glimmer on the horizon threatening to burn my ebony perfection away, to obliterate in flame what the cold of the forever would render protected, loved. Time for The Night to leave.

I’ll be back tomorrow, though.

I promise.