Spoken By The Walls

Written By Kwesi D.

It was a thing that could not be whispered about comfortably even between confidants, not broached in a room off to the back, with the doors closed and the windows lowered, where two or three might have been gathered, drinking heavily and talking openly, with words distorted by the alcohol and a whizzing fan or perhaps a heater, making it difficult for eavesdroppers to decipher. It was too personal. It was just the type of thing that could not be clearly conveyed or willingly articulated. And a man is a creature of pride in numerous measure, and conditioning. It was too personal. It was the type of thing that could not be described freely, without the threat of interpretation. No. This rejection, this insult were for my heart alone to bear; the devastation, for my chest alone to attempt to restrain within its brittle walls.

The dead ancestors themselves would know for certain that one can only speak for oneself in love and other matters. Love was the subject. Love misused was the secret I hid behind my confident stride, with my shoulders pressed out, broad and foreboding, and a head held up against the sun. I felt the women swelter under their dresses when I appeared and regarded them, but I was dying inside. A love discarded flooded my consciousness. It overflowed into all of my happy fantasies and drowned them out. It banished me from the city and into the bed to gaze blankly at the walls, to watch them swell and deform from too much focus. It withdrew me from the company of others like salt water retracting slowly across sand. This insult, this heartache was mine alone to hoard. It was too personal.

It is the notion that love is the highest achievement of the living that holds us captive, setting us out upon unknown paths, making the lonely feel that they have failed somehow and question their purpose; their worth. Thinking that the divine had finally blown its kiss at me from the heavens or the outer galaxies or right here in the invisible dimensions, I flung open my doors to catch it. I watched it soar in and land on me like a little bird and allowed it to remain. Good sense and restraint were pushed aside and the wish that I might walk with you was dominant; it was paramount like the idols that send believers to their knees. I fell on my knees and cried when it was done; I cried and trembled; I cried and cursed my own weakness; I cried out my shame in a place that no one could see. A man is a creature of pride, after all – a creature of pride and conditioning.

The dead ancestors would know for certain the many mysteries of all there is to know, all that the living have yet to comprehend. They must see, from their positions, the end of the long stone path and grasp its maneuvers and meanderings; they must watch as one day unfolds into the next by design and predict the steady course of a healing heart. They have to know, before the unknowing, that he will once more find comfort in the contact of others; feel his way back to the world; acquiesce to a friendly gesture; see his way back from desolation; raise his head once more in the sunlight; stride with true confidence in good time; and genuinely smile at just the right moment, smile and look into just the right face; reconcile with love at last and wait once more for a kiss from the divine.