The sound of chalk

People are still missing, 20 plus bodies trapped in a carriage, at least 50 dead, mostly unidentified. Families and friends of the missing are gathered in different sites, waiting, hoping. Photographs of the missing have been put up. My heart breaks for them and I am thrown back. Or not really. Sometimes I feel I've never left. Whichever way I phrase it, I know what they are thinking, what they are praying for.

They are saying He is unconscious in some hospital and has no documents and that's why we haven't heard anything yet, it's still early days. And when that no longer helps smother the fear they'll fervorously think He is unconscious in some hospital and has no documents and has sustained several facial injuries and that's why we haven't heard anything yet, it's still early enough. And that will turn into He is unconscious in some hospital and has no documents and is burnt beyond recognition and that's why we haven't heard anything yet, despite all these days that have gone by. The families and friends will pray that they be returned to them, regardless of disfiguration degree, bcs that's still better than the alternative. Let him come back maimed but let him come back. We don't care, just.... Please.

Some will receive a phone call. Life will more or less return to normal. The one they prayed for is somehow, somewhere, alive. Miraculously. And yet their hearts will forever be heavy and their guilt will be immense bcs:

Some will receive a phone call. They've found him. And they will hear the sound of chalk on the cosmic blackboard, and that one screech will forever be embedded in their consciousness and resonate at all times, even when they sleep, sometimes especially then. And they will want to screech as well but even if they do there is no comfort bcs nothing will ever drown out [ha!] the sounds they will never hear again.

I am so sorry, so terribly sorry for your pain.

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This feels appropriate:

"A place of refuge for human vessels"*


The Drifter came and said:

Out there is where it all starts.
Hell is out there,
deep, deep inside, beneath your soul.
Internal thoughts may never be,
they take the place I had for thee,
and in a world of loss and hate
you have to crawl and never take.
There is no future and no past,
there is a limbo that will last
for ever and a thousand years,
a cry of warriors, of my fears,
a battle which will never see
the night that grows inside of me.

But I'm alone and this I know:
I am the Drifter who will grow
a crop of souls in every man,
a place to hide and dare to ban,
for here I stand, inside of me,
sailing the thoughts of fears to be.
I am the one who dared to sail the human vessels - and never fail.

Dec 92 (©2003)

* Title is a quote from Tennessee Williams' "Small Craft Warnings"