The Voice kept trying to turn him back—“there is nothing behind the wall except a space where the wind whistles”—but he refused to believe its repeated lies.
And yet he could not find the source, hidden somewhere within the dimensionless shadows of the vertical, the angled, the edge.
He himself was scrabbled, suspended out of sight, waiting underneath many meaningless layers of illusion. The indifference did not bother him; neither did the newsprint words strewn carelessly about.
He considered himself abandoned, lost inside an unwritten story. Curious strings embedded his thoughts in articles torn from the back page.
But what had happened to his body? It was a puzzle he could not figure out. He could see, listen, think. But his position never changed.
Was his mind an orphan, birthed incompletely, accidentally, a false start left unfinished?
Was he himself the Voice?
I did this collage a few months ago, and I’ve been waiting for the right words to pair with it. Merril’s prosery prompt at dVerse,
“there is nothing behind the wall
except a space where the wind whistles”
from “Drawings By Children” by Lisel Mueller
found its way into an old freewrite page in my notebook that contained the phrase newsprint words strewn carelessly about and gave it some shape.
K. 
ooh eerie, love it Kerfe … glad I finally found where you post!
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Thanks Kate. You’ll find me both places, but I’m glad you found this one too!
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took a while but so am I 🙂
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I can identify with the feeling of being an unwritten story, or an unfinished (and very bad) symphony.
The feeling of being fractured was palpable in this piece.
~cie from poetry of the netherworld~
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Thanks–I think we’ve all been there.
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I like the disembodied tone of this, and I wonder if that extreme introspection is what can grow into paranoia, or an abandon of responsibility for anything. If someone is pulling the strings, how can we be blamed?
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Thanks Jane, I’ve been thinking a lot about paranoia lately and how it almost seems contagious. I’ve caught myself drifting over the line more than once.
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Don’t go there. Just tell yourself the sad truth, not enough people know who you are to be worried about what you do or don’t do.
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I’m not paranoid about myself. It’s the rest of the world I’m worried about. I thought I was being paranoid that Trump would sell state secrets to ease his debts, and then there’s a big newspaper article today that intelligence experts are worried about it too. If it impacts the safety of the United States it definitely impacts the safety of me in NYC.
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Then I’m with you. He won’t sell the secrets yet though as he’s decided he’s in for another four years. Maybe next time when he changes the system and declares himself president for life.
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I think he’s already done that. We’ll see if the system actually works and he’s forced to leave. It seems the Republicans will do nothing to stop him, even now.
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That awful fat Pompeo and even fatter Barr talk as though Trump is the legally elected president. I hope when the dust settles they’ll charge them with sedition or something.
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I would love to see all of them spend the rest of their lives in jail. Don’t forget McDonnell!
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You can draw up the list. You know the devils better than I do.
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Too well.
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Such an interesting introspective piece told from the perspective of someone who does not know himself at all. A lot to ponder here Kerfe.
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Thanks Ingrid. Its an interesting exercise to try to inhabit someone else’s mind.
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I love the air of disembodiment, Kerfe, especially in the phrase ‘a false start left unfinished’, and the lost-in-a-maze Kafkaesque tone in the ’dimensionless shadows of the vertical, the angled, the edge’. And there is something familiar about the feeling of being ‘lost inside an unwritten story’.
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Thanks Kim. It’s a feeling far too familiar these days.
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Oh, this is excellent! Such an original and unique perspective on the prompt! It’s Kafkaesque to me–that trapped in a nightmare world feeling. The collage is perfect. Thank you for this.
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Thanks for the great prompt! I think we have been trapped by the headlines for far too long now. Perhaps the new year will give us some room to breathe.(k)
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I do hope so!
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This is so very creative, once more utilizing your own Art as an internal prompt; eerie yes, even macabre, but I would go with Poe, or Heinlein more than Kafka. I even think it could touch on some Rod Serlingness.
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Thanjs Glenn. Yes, Rod could have done a lot with this I think.
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