The book of the dead

This is a short one, but it is complete...

I saw you crouched down by the headstone in the graveyard, as if you were learning something, but it was just the sundown jail dancing in your whirl trying to tell me what I was losing.

I swayed in that, encouraged by your grace, your beauty, but let down again by where I wasn’t.

I couldn’t find a way to you, tired all over again; so I played the hallelujah song until I couldn’t sleep anymore. And as all the heroes died, I lived on, and remembered all the places I’d ever been without you, and knew you were never without me.

The show was black, and then later, all the colours came by in the dust to say: so many have perished this way, following what friends have spoken about; but that was their way, and we’re not found there, where they are lost and we are looking, looking at you crouched down, given up.

So I turned away to find myself crouched down by the headstone in the graveyard to learn another way; but it was no good, so I gave up.

Where did it all go wrong; or did it; how can I say?

“Are you reading that damn book again?” said Dante.

Kafka had a lot of time to think about things and how he was going to raise the dead; but the dead can never be raised; and perhaps this is why it takes so long to raise them.

Image from Pixabay

End of part 39