O, Sweet Nothing by Jasper Clark
~for Caden
I had a bushel of crumpled origami flowers in my hand.
I planned on tossing the bushel into a public reservoir;
folding over & collapsing on itself,
it would gain purpose in filling the blue with flakes.
The trees were all lazy.
Lazy trees that forgot to let the moonlight dance on their skin,
&
Startle them into existence beyond sight.
Concealed behind the long woven coffee pods, hung, laughing
was an underpass where highschoolers
had taken it upon themselves to give us a message.
I let the delicate paper petal dissolve in my hand,
floating in the water, never out of reach -
You will only partially dance throughout my fingers,
An elephant within a carnival cage.
He became sea foam, The flowers became pollution
There is no meaning, in the light projected circles
Streaked along the ripples.
It’s nothing. We’ve always been nothing.
Tonight’s the night, to stay awake with the jaunts -
How the moon melts blueprints upon my face -
How I picture the olive complexion of Caden in those currents.
I’m going to a funeral in the morning -
I cannot bring myself to write a memento,
I cannot bring myself to dream -
Once it was an avid doorway.
Now. All I see are names.
The many names spray-painted on the underpass,
The rituals, religions, organizations -
A high school swastika for typical teenage rebellion -
How I tried to stroke your evening to concord
How I was the moth that flew from your mouth -
To the white horse that traveled roads,
Backrooms, lost alleys, of your arm -
&
mind.
“Stay clear of the needle my love, my sister, darling”
I said over coffee -
She didn’t know the context,
Therefore, I went back to breathing Caravaggio.
The sweet peel of moonlight induced the sacrifice -
black shoe, black box, black veil, black drape,
Ceremony of young loss, merely a hologram
For the morgue’s stone talisman-
The silence is a dart.
“He’d only been a year older than you,”
my father said, before hiding his eyes.
It wasn’t a sadness - it was a resting point
At which I found no desire to carry the load
There was a crane shaped hole
Plastered upon the side of oblivion.
Rest easy - I’ll kiss your eyelids
&
bury stoicism in my handkerchief.
I was unable to cry at the announcement to my father and I,
Now, with the moon overhead as an inquisitor
I have put a finger upon it. It was that Sweet Nothing.
Snow globes - shook on the mantle.
Concord, the room is quiet:
The echoes
&
wrappers of your laughter etched in the wallpaper,
I have no intention of cleaning the mess,
For if I pile up your clothes,
the flannels,
the coats,
The scarves,
into a tote,
to auction them off -
I’ll be ridding this house of a home -
One that was built
from the ground up
By home-cooking, laughter -
&
Light.
* * *
This life we’re infected by is nothing.
That's it -
Vacant space -
At which we must decorate.
It’s disease, erosion, amnesia, & fire
It’s the extinct whistling of an infantry;
it is all the faded photographs
It's the ceaseless confusion of traffic -
& the gentle galloping whine of that white horse
That consequential I thought I had more time
We all find ourselves latching upon throughout childhood.
It goes on & on for as long as the eye can see -
& it finally surrounds towards the 8th decade
It shall never sleep.
That is why you, Concord, were a waste -
Broken down as Caravaggio and Van Gough -
Merely spiraling textures of brush strokes -
You were intricate in design.
&
Now,
I burn this candle
crafted by wax and strands of leaf
That I had found in your house,
A wasteland
at which to stare out over artifacts,
As a memorial.
O, Sweet Nothing.
Jasper Clark is a writer from Lexington Kentucky with a pastime for mindless shenanigans. He spends quite a bit of his life boring over pointless activities, and one day he’ll collapse from a lack of sleep and stress.