I choked them with the very chains they tried to use, peering into their lifeless eyes as the realized their situation, gasping for an air they could not have it. Maybe now this means I’m a criminal and seeing as how I feel no regret, I might even be considered a psychopath. So be it.

Living in a forsaken city such as this one doesn’t really entice fighting for what is right nor for freedom and when crooks are the lawmakers, is abiding by the law right at all?

All I know is that I had scores to settle and someone was going down tonight and it was either me or him. I’m sure as hell that it will be him.

When you experience magic, you are not truly witnessing an illusion but a different thing altogether. You are staring death in the face and saying that you will live through it, you are telling yourself that loved ones that have passed away are still with you, you are telling yourself that there is, simple as that, magic.
After taking a look at life can we really say that there is no magic out there?

Sometimes life presents to us strangers that we will hate only to love after and then hate again, or maybe it will introduce us to people we seem to think are shallow only to find that, in reality, they are like us, all too human and too afraid, maybe they need to see more magic, maybe they need to witness a bit of the wonder of the illusion and laugh a little at life – and death. To understand that we are not a single piece on a lone puzzle but all part of an intricate and elaborate chain, we are the links to our past and, as the Iroquois would have it, we are the ones who must attend our children’s land until they can attend that of their own kids.

We are not a single person. We are young, we are old, we embrace the arcane and the cutting-edge. We are naive and jaded, we live by contradictions trying to find home, trying to give life meaning, trying to find for ourselves the right trick so that one might look back in life with no regrets. We will cry, we will laugh, we will change opinions, we will sway – some more, some less – as life whims it. And as those before us have it, so will we, as will those that come after us.

Maybe I’m a silly bugger for knowingly embracing the magic act but I’ll be damned if life isn’t all about making connections or rather, the human connection. At the end of the day, when asking myself to an empty room “Is Anybody There?”, I know that no answer will come because the room is empty and all it can tell me is that there is no such things as ghosts and magic. But if I shout it through my window… an angry neighbor will most definitely reply and we will both know we are not alone and that our actions… they carry on like ripples on a lake.
Seeing the power every choice we make carries, can anyone really say that there is no such thing as magic?

She wondered if he was just a hallucination caused by the lack of sleep but again, she knew it was for naught because he was all too real. She screamed and ran trying to get out but there was nowhere to go – trapped in a daydream inside her own mind, alone with him.

Lord listen to love, she is losing life, the alliteration of all the things she won’t, wouldn’t and didn’t.
She won’t listen, she wouldn’t love and she didn’t live. And for this we are all forever afflicted.

Our glances met before we could withdraw the firearms and we knew, we knew it was too late. The dust would corroborate our history but not this moment, not our glory. That would be left alone for the bystanders, for all there that did not dare to take action and just stood… gazing into a scene that was over all too soon.

We fell apart, exposing our human condition as we bleed to death on the dirt, the Sun burning the skin on our bones. But midnight would come and we would rise to fight again. It was the ballad of the Western Night, it was our way to fight the good fight. And as each speckle of dust flew, so did the story. As candle-light burnt, so did our glory.
We were real characters of fiction.

-I made a promise to come back here today, so, you see, I had to come back here. Today, not a day later.

-But that was a promise you made when we were just kids, surely you mustn’t hold onto it.

-I know what you are going to say, I see the ring in your hand, I know what happened. But I… I made a promise and even if I fail, I will not be the one to break it.

-… Why so much commitment to words you ushered so long ago?

-Because… man have grow to learn that words have no meaning, that love is merely a game of deception and that the truth is best kept safe fully hidden. They have masked their actions while belittling those of us who keep our words. There was a time when a man’s word was proof enough but now… people know words dissipate into thin air and that memories become hazy with time. The only thing they fail to realize is that… my dear… we are only as eternal as we last.

-But… are you sure?

-As sure as one can be.

They kissed, a tender kiss that had waited aeons to happen. And it was only that, a kiss. They knew they would never see each other again. He would die in the war, she would die within the motherland. They were never to see each other ever again, he was never to smell her sweet perfume nor would she ever slide her hand on the back of his neck.
This was goodbye and yet… they didn’t cry, it was raining so much… That it seemed a waste that the last thing they would ever do together would be crying.
They died with that kiss still on their lips and even if the story goes about unheard and untold… that moment, that face of human reality – It was there. And I’ll never forget as long as I last.

In what seemed to be a preparation for a party, a group of people gathered in my apartment. Some where in the kitchen, preparing a cake, woven from wide chocolate stripes, being prepared just like woven baskets are. It was symbolizing a horse and I know there was a rider in the imagery but I get confused and cannot recall exactly where the rider was. A college friend was there, someone whose friend I developed a crush on. As I moved deeper into my apartment, I saw that girl for whom I had a crush, let’s call her A. The one that makes your heart race and your head spin. That kind of girl. She knew how to push my buttons but I moved towards her to end things. I sat with her and another girl nearby, whom I will call J, and wrote a goodbye letter. And a love letter. To her, it was the goodbye letter, to the other girl in the room, it was the love letter. I printed it out and tried to give it to her but J took it from my hands. As I tried to speak, to break up with A, she started to try and tell me of her affection, showing me a hand-sewed bag, adorned with images and mementos in my honor. They spoke of wolfs, birth, motherhood, love and war. It moved me and I don’t even know precisely why, because one should not need a bag with painting decals to make the other know what the hell is going on. As she showed me this, J, who I’ve always liked, stared at me, jealous. She looked very different from what I know she looks like but… it was her. I took the letter out of her hands, worried that that would ruin my relationship with A. I ripped the letter apart, asking J how far had she read it and she only replied “As far as the other name appears.”. I knew she had read the title of the love letter that I wrote for herself. I continued tearing the paper apart, taking it to a trash bin… and all the time, J stared at me. There she was, in the hallways, looking at me. Hiding secrets. Girl A was nowhere to be found after that and I looked at the ripped letter in my hands, it had turned into dough, as in, pizza dough. I looked around trying to understand what was happening but… there was no sense to be made out of it.
The more I think of it, the less I like this dream. It remembers me of funerals, as if I was the one dying. Or were I already dead?

I can’t shake the feeling of this dream away and how awful I feel right now. I feel betrayed, lost in a maze of shadows. I feel… a bit dead. And I have yet to see someone understand that.

As lovers have their shadows burned by fake nuclear explosions made with bright lights and as friends depart separated ways, I wake up reborn, bringing an epiphany that I have long known but seldom admitted. There is such a thing as too much good, too much light. Without an equilibrium, we can’t really see what is there. The truth knows no light nor shadows, it only knows time.

—

I remember that I went with the crew to party on occasion,  we went near a crater, akin to a volcano, dancing around it. The girl I liked, a newcomer in my life, was there but she payed no attention to me. And yet, she danced alone, hiding her own body with a veil. She smiles and… I fall in love with her. But I know how it all ends. It ends with a bright light and burned shadows.

Today I stand here staring at the crumbling walls of that old room, can’t help but fill a sense of doom and gloom. Doesn’t feel like home anymore, the peeling paint makes our drawings torn, shreded mementos of our long lost home. God… this place brings so much memories to mind, it is almost as if my body was imersed in a daydream…
I hear the circus drums as they parade through the main avenue, the song echoes in my heart and plays my strings, I smile and I see her eyes smile back.
A kiss.

Lost such a long time ago, where she is now, I don’t know.
Wish I knew, but she became a mere memory.
God knows I’ve been forgetting things lately.
How can I find someone else when I don’t know myself?
This is all I have, fragments of a life long gone, sometimes it feels as if it even was not my own, I mean, how can it be mine if I don’t recall the events, if I can’t claim ownership on past acts?
I guess I’m stuck daydreaming, I wish I was stuck living.