prologue to nothing

“Have you ever known a place where God would feel at home?”

Umberto Eco, The Name Of The Rose

there was dirt under his nails –
those uncared-for nails,
bitten and with stains of blood,
having known the nervousness of his teeth –
and his eyes were cloudy,
sad
and gray,
perfect reflection
of the undecided sky above.
the bones of god’s word
would have fit perfectly in his palm,
if ever his palm had been free
of the memory of one house
on a nameless street
flooded with sunlight one summer morning.

white…
everything was outrageously white,
as if somehow heaven had spilled
its entire bright purity
over those limed walls…
the only things preventing an explosion of light
were some cracked wooden panes,
striving to carefully protect
the inside from the outside…

only the ghosts of those sunbeams
were able to make the clouds in his gaze
move aside,
and in those rare cases
one could see a pair of
incredibly sapphirine irises,
harboring like a living vault
the secrets of mankind glazed with sorrow…

some said
that was the hideout of Samael,
after trading his wings
for Lilith’s resurrection.
others said
it was the place where souls
were waiting to ascend after meeting Azrael.
but nobody knew for sure
what purpose did that place serve,
and to whom it actually belonged.

nobody, except for him…
somehow he remembered
nothing prior to opening his eyes
upon that door.
he was standing in front of it,
feeling under his soles
the sun-heated cubic stones paving that street.
for him,
that was the second his life had begun,
and also the second when it had ended…
he had no idea
how much time he had spent inside that house,
wandering from one room to another,
marveling at the way
everything seemed to be perfect…
in the blink of an eye,
he just knew what it meant,
although he had no idea
how he knew that …

guided by the typical fear,
mothers forbid their offspring to talk to him
when he had emerged from that house.
people kept whispering at corners
that his shoulder blades bore
the marks of the fallen,
yet nobody wanted to listen to him
when explaining why each small crack had its reasons
and why his voice had become a prism,
translating for them
the rainbow hidden within the white…

after a while
he stopped talking.
he sat, silent, in the corner of some stairs,
in the middle of an ignorant world,
aware that people didn’t care
for the reason why he just wouldn’t
go back inside that perfect white house
and be happily forgotten…
because he just loved too much
the rainbow of their souls …

“Prologue to nothing” is the closing poem of Liliana’s volume “The hidden well”. For the audio version feel free to click below:

LILIANA NEGOI  (Endless Journey and in Romanian curcubee în alb şi negru) ~ is a member of our core team on Into the Bardo. She is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows, Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well.  The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE.  Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.