A Tension Exists in the Utmost Room

In the utmost room of a building rich with story and stature, there exists a supposed sanctuary sapped with a holy tension that I was compelled to pursue. As I was led to understand, the room reveals itself in relative magnitude to lend itself to revelation that only the individual present is led to realize. All that a man was, is, and ever will be is taken into account.

I cannot, unfortunately, explain how I came to find this building; it is all I can do to tell how majestic it was in its primal grandeur. Matchless indeed in its architecture and design, there are no clear descriptions that can give on

The building itself stretched far into the sky, so tall that one’s eyes could not make out its rooftop. I entered with reverence and soon became aware of its profound sanctity as there were no stairs to assist in ascending to the utmost room. There was, as if quietly insisted by the building’s architect, only the bare means for one to climb by might and struggle to rise upwards, balcony after balcony stretching up story after story.

So I did. By my hands and feet, calloused through the tightening and retightening of my grip I scaled the never-ending stories in pursuit of the utmost room, whose hope of existence strengthened in my bones with each desperate inch I climbed.

At long last, I made out the forming of a rooftop above my head and saw one final balcony to reach and overcome. This was the utmost room that I had been purposed to find. With a final exerted effort, I pushed over the balcony wall; landing my feet into the room: the sanctuary of holy tension.

The room, covered with decadent rugs and furs of all nations, was adorned with only various sizes of tables that were methodically placed. On each table were picture frames of all the saints, holy men and women of my life.

Their faces followed mine as I walked to the hearth of the room. I turned to see a large, low-rising, table in the middle of the room. A figure sat on the opposite corner, alive and present with me in every way.

There she sat with legs curled around her, looking so beautiful as to make me think I had never laid eyes on a woman before. She looked at me with eyes half-hidden beneath her locks of glowing blonde hair and quietly proclaimed:

“I am your future.”

I could only offer silence as I stood in a stupor, locking eyes with this saintly woman. Was she real? Or was she a representation of something I was supposed to perceive? I had not the time to churn this enigma in my thoughts as we were not alone.

From the opposite corner a figure approached, crossing to the holy threshold of the sanctuary with the humility of a childhood friend. The figure, a woman so vaguely familiar, looked at me with eyes of pure hazel that perfectly matched her auburn hair. With smooth intention, she spoke to me:

“I am your past.”

So this is the tension that exists, a mystery I cannot fathom as I am caught betwixt the two. Am I to choose or am I to ponder? I have left myself to stand and wonder while two figures of divine symbolism await my hand. The utmost room holds a tension that I, by my own power, am powerless to force a decision upon and it is to this end that like a triangle of marble figures those within the tower remain.

His Tender Head Requires Mending

enjoy the analysis and suggested symbolisms.

My feet walked along a well-tread path, arid and dusty as it begged for moisture. I frequented this path often at night, taking comfort in the anonymity of the dark and those who I encountered along it.

One does not usually meet others along the path under the midnight heat, but on this night an uncommon occurrence stood before me as a vehicle sat blocking my passage. Its mangled body idled gruffly under the moonlight and it appeared the vehicle had just survived a vicious accident as several individuals lay scattered on the trail.

The vehicle, dented and barely holding itself together, roared away at the hands of its indifferent driver, nameless and faceless. Of those who had been vaulted from its clutches, all had managed to arise and walk but one. A boy sat hunched over in a pothole large enough to encompass his small frame. I walked slowly towards him, scanning the steaming debris and broken glass that glistened under the hazed glow of the night.

I approached the boy under the watchful eye of those survivors that kept their distance. The enormity of the situation appeared to have overwhelmed them as one by one they walked off, separating themselves from the severity of the boy's condition.

I knelt beside the boy with calm reserve as he was without sound, so engrossed in shock that he did not even blink or acknowledge the presence of another right before him. With his hood tight around his face, the boy's eyes maintained a forward stare, empty of thought and purpose. I moved directly in front of him and looked him over for injuries. My hands reached for the hood and slipped it back down his neck, revealing a massive gouge on top of his head, sitting atop his right eye.

What appeared to be an absence of flesh was really a brutal dent in his skull, resulting in a large amount of blood being spilled down the entire right side of his body. The blood cascaded from the wound down over his ear, had covered his neck and was soaked into the collar of his shirt.

I decided to do what I could to keep him lucid and alive until help could be found. To my surprise, the bolstered himself and rose up from the pothole. I steadied him with my hands as he began to move his feet and shuffle out and away from the crash site. While it was remarkable, I was sure someone in his condition need not walk so much, even though it was clear there was a driving force within this boy that was could not be adequately reflected through his expression.

I ushered him off the path for a period of rest, finding an abandoned courtyard, broken and corroded by years of neglect. I sat with him on my lap, holding his hands and praying that help would come soon. The wound had long coagulated, adorning the right side of his face in thick, crusted blood. Still, despite bearing this horrendous gouge, he lived, breathing and perceiving what comfort I could give him.

In the dull glow of dusk, the gray sky opened and released its waters on the dry trail and those treading upon it. I arose, helping the boy to his feet as I raised a hand to keep the falling drops from aggravating his dried wound. He remained silent but responded to every supportive gesture I made as I guided him to again walk down the trail in search of refuge from the waters.

The trail inclined slightly as it approached a grove of trees, in which was nestled a small cottage. The cottage, surrounded by high-reaching oak trees that basked the home in bucolic comfort, gave one the impression that it had existed forever, flawlessly kept in its quiescent state.

I had been to this place before, though I had been alone on my previous visit. This place, the cottage and its surroundings were no ordinary place. When last there, I was made aware that this was a house where memories of past events played themselves out in real life, seemingly free of danger but still a harrowing phenomenon to behold when it occurred as their frequency and recurrence were unpredictable.

The cottage was procured by a man and his wife, older in age and exuding an air of experience that I knew would lend itself useful to the boy and myself given our predicament. As our feet crossed the threshold, they were there to welcome us with calm, close-mouthed smiles that matched the kindness and wisdom in their eyes. They looked at me and at the boy as they ushered us inside to their kitchen, their expressions unchanged as they looked over his dented, bloody head.

Just as the man and his wife were opening their mouths to speak, I caught out of the corner of my eye, a figure walking up the trail to the cottage. I turned my eyes and head from the man and his wife to see in full a bearded man, traipsing up the lane in his purposed and stuttered walk that set within me a fear that gripped my bones. His eyes, burning with an odious ire, refused to flinch from their set gaze. In his left hand, the bearded man gripped a handgun in his bloodless knuckles.

It was in this moment, in the precious ephemeral seconds between my seeing the bearded man and his arrival past the threshold, that the phenomenon revealed itself in understanding. This was a past memory of the man and his wife. It had happened before, it belonged to them alone and two individuals stood in the kitchen that shifted the balance of a peaceful conclusion.

The boy and myself were not supposed to be there and could prove to be a catalyst for something disastrous. I gathered the boy in my arms and flung myself past the man and his wife, towards the stairs. The man and his wife, in their unchanged stoicism, watched my flight. As my sweeping gaze caught their eyes, they rendered unto me an understanding of the situation.

In this memory, the bearded man was including them in a game he liked to play. He would walk into the house and hold them at gunpoint, forcing them to stare down the barrel of his gun and rage. All three would hold this position in a motionless stupor. The game was only that if the man or his wife, or anyone in the cottage, made a sound or flinched, the bearded man was justified in firing upon all residents, leaving the house with the only beating heart.

In the corner of the cottage's basement we sat, myself wide-eyed and cold with panicked sweat. I again sat with the boy in my lap; my arms around him and gripping his hands with my own.  The bearded man had entered and I could perceive that the man and his wife were already at his mercy.

I held my breath as the game began, resting my cheek on the boy's tender head while I tightened my grip around his limp hands. I closed my eyes and whispered into his ear a desperate plea, "Please. Please be quiet. He will hurt us."

Her Eyes Remind Me of Another's

Flung from the grasp of my fragmented hand,

An invocation to regain something grand.

For crowns and trees with my petition,

Demand a man's bold remission.

And so it sets about undoing

The forge of whispers and cooing.

A hapless prank, though not my vision,
Invokes this unforeseen division.

For she is stunned; she and her eyes.

They look, but cannot recognize.

To cast a broken glance my way
Employs a departure, twice-turned gray.

I turned my back with heart a'breaking

A needless foe now in the making;
As correlation blinks and blurs,
Reminding me only of another's.

Encompassed by a stricken host, 

Akin to depths unknown to most.

With steps repressing from her unseen tears,
I invite and welcome the chorused jeers.

To thus retire to my makeshift home,
A restless soul ne'er fit to roam.
And by dust and sand the corners corrode,
For I left the path I should have showed.

So this is where my fortune rests,
Upon my shoulders, invalid crests.
To sit and ponder a grander past;
The crowns and trees that could not last.

The Circle

Round and round
You go and go,
With two doors down
And one door left.


Will it be good to you?


Round and round
You try and try,
The switch to flick
And path reroute.


Will it be right to you?


Round and round
You leave and leave,
Under idle eyes
A flight presumed.


Will it be enough to you?


Round and round
You show and show,
One to run, and one to chase
Whose blemish cannot erase.


Will it be all to you?

A Secret Housed Within a Structure

The world was an immense plain of nothing, miles upon miles of landscape meant to be avoided, colorless and void save for he and myself. For seemingly all of my existence, I had been searching for this place.

I could see it in the distance, across the gray valley, sitting on the crest of a hill that overlooked its surroundings. The structure, a cube half buried in the hill's protective soil, had proven difficult to find as years upon years had passed in my relentless pursuit.

Regardless, I had found it. I had felt it in my bones long ago that he could not hide this from me. Even if it took years, which it has, to find its location. The structure housed a secret, one that he had been keeping from me for ages.

The dull, pallid sides of the cube glowed ominously in the dark, barely but sufficiently standing out from the terrain. Within minutes I had glided through the gray valley and arrived at the western wall of the structure. It was not a large building, at least what was shown above the surface of the black soil, barely surpassing my own height.

I walked around the structure, perplexed at its simplistic complexity. Without windows and doors, how was I to gain entrance and retrieve the long-kept secret within? I returned to the western wall and stood before it. Disbelief began to overcome me. Had I come all this way only to be stymied by a structure with no way in?

With eyes closed, I lifted an open palm and placed it on the cold concrete wall. My elbow was nearly fully extended before I realized I was not touching anything. I opened my eyes and saw the concrete wall had engulfed my hand up to mid-forearm. I gasped in astonishment. Perhaps there were rules older than his securities, rules that granted my touch significant.

I stepped through the borders of the structure. What I had thought to be a cube half-buried was much larger as it seem I had walked into the top story of a skyscraper, lost and buried with time and dirt.

With the ceiling directly above my head, I looked downward, scanning endless stories of catwalks and stairs that reached far below the surface of the ground. Deep in the structure sat an enclosed, cube-like room, surrounded by a maze of metal walkways and pipes. The secret withheld by him was there, in that room that sat deep enough where one would need to commit to the menacing, dim-lit labyrinth in order to reach it.

Again, as if destiny itself was lending its direct guidance, I had found my way to the room as only minutes passed. I entered through the door, bringing my feet to rest before a stainless steel table. I had made it. I felt sure that whatever was in this room, whatever secret that I had long been pursuing, would soon present itself to me, at long last providing fulfillment from this endless game.

My eyes transfixed on the table, whose coldness upon my hands quickly enlightened me to an alarming observation: there was nothing on the table and nothing else in the room. As it was empty and starkly void of any relevance, I understood the room had cleverly been prepared for my discovery.

He knew.

My heart quickly passed the fleeting adrenaline of victory near at hand, sending echoes of grave error and an immediate need for flight throughout my body. I stood with mouth agape at the incredulous fault that I had not foreseen.

He knew that I would stop at nothing to find this place. He knew that I would find my way to the room, so far recessed in his labyrinth in blind pursuit of a secret I thought to be vindictive, that I would risk all and everything on obtaining it. Everything I thought to be of my own strength and advantage was used against me.

As the entire structure proceeded in its lockdown and the door to the room sealed itself, I only stand and watch, stunned as my own naive resilience passively resigns to his beautifully crafted abyss. Even attempting escape at this point would have been foolhardy.

Here I was, trapped within the earth by a maze crafted of my own confusion and stupidity and whatever cogent notions that drove me to this place now serve as the catalyst for my entombment. The only secret that this structure housed was that before I had even begun looking, he knew how best to trap me.