The Unquiet Void

Birdsong flew out, clearly, sweetly and nothing but melodious delight. In a night of impenetrable blackness the forecoming dawn allowed only a strained green hue to present itself, there, in the hollow. Their eyes round and wet in their sockets, hard beads full of a mocking consciousness or a joy that wants nothing from you and the most beautiful browns, blues and reds go unseen in this most distant of places. Away from a clutch of birds a crow looks out with a would-be anxious look and shifts on a branch, a rough organic grating sound as it does. Clicking and clacking. It too cries out as if only to register its bare existence and who or what hears her? Down below sequestered on an earth cold and turned in on itself, leaves turned crisp, brittle and insects rendered alien by the light go about their impenetrable business. Worms writhe in their own hollowed out veins of earth and behave immortal though death awaits if not with dawn then with dusk. The barren skirt of land surrounding seemed bruised, bitter, secluded away, a recalcitrant witness barring passage. An infinite distance lay between here and that safe realm of glare and noise and further still from the feel of fire almost burning skin.

Screens are magnets. Like an icon held in front of one’s face it deletes the surrounding scenery and becomes an object of devotion. Of time not love. The real. We don’t see anything else. Symptoms may include time dilation. Increased seclusion. A love of darkness.

An apathy for the light.

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Prose by Ryan Boyd, photograph by Chris Friel.