Everyday these days a metaphor meets my eye and straining to capture it i start sentences like this one, only to strike it out and begin anew. Like an old apartment building, stripped off of its life, awaiting demolishment- and in mid-sentence the thought inevitably fizzle out.
Stepping away from the clamor of life i pull back my window curtains to see it, an old apartment building waiting to be demolished. No word i know can carry the weight of its emptiness- empty, vacant, abandoned- none says it. Its windows and doors and air conditioners have been torn off leaving behing yawning holes to the centre of its emptiness. Peering through these gaps i see how each apartment was once a home, that sort of place you call your own when you are out in the world, that sort of place entering which, especially alone at night, your hand juts out for human contact just to overcome the moment. All the bits and pieces left behind - broken furnitures, torn blankets, one faded teddy bear- further fills the place with nothingness. If this abandoned building was left there as a joke the punchline has to be the swear word someone painted on one of its pillars, a bold f and u, a wavering c, a timid k and a hazy u ; a punchline losing its fizz as its told.
Because my eyes cannot go all the way into it i send my words to grapple it. I seize it! but in a moment it thrashes about violently, gashes my hands with its gills and escapes my grasp.
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