The Word Slipped From Your Lips

The piano kicks into a tune and my hands go cold, my ears sensitive to the touch of notes and my eyes escorted away on vacation. Without vision the world is an open place, a void of empty nothingness like a blank page with a nearby pen being uncapped. Images unreal in substance but real in thought flash like recollections of colour. A reminder they exist within this void, this space so small and so large. The piano changes melody and vision returns: a wooden room with framed pictures, chairs occupied by people, a window dripping with weakened frost, candlelight providing a flickering glow to these surroundings. You're sitting across the table, staring out into something though perhaps nothing. You're quiet. You don't look my way. On the surface I don't want you to. The tune changes again and a singer appears, belting out an awkward falsetto. It works, like strawberry jam on a bacon sandwich, like a laugh track at the beginning of a show, like a pair of glasses when there's a cold wind outside. Your lips move, forming something that cannot be heard even by you. Still you are quiet, still you don't look my way. Back into an instrumental now, vision vanishes again. Words replace colour in our void, meaningless words useless even within the realm of thought. To see them is to disbelieve them, they are props, ghosts, cons posing as truth. The word that escaped from you in silence will not be found here. The word is no mystery, no illusion. You're quiet. The piano melody slows down. Vision returns and the room is darker, the candles have flickered out. No one cares or no one notices. These departed open flames leave a scent in the wooden room, how easily it all could've burned. Instead the wax has melted to nothing. Now the song ends, there is a polite cheer, while the band says a final word. The word is no mystery, no illusion.