My ears are numb, I cannot hear, the seismic roar has temporarily deafened me. My eyes scan, all the other eyes in the darkness scan for you and there you are, suddenly, sharp, defined, almost outlined in the post-apocalyptic silence.
Suddenly…. You are running away, now, blindly pushing through the still morass of bodies, running, charging even, your own feet given flight by the word that you hold high above your head, tears streaming out of your eyes, hair flying, blind eyes wildly trying to work out how you know where you are going.
I lick the tear rivulet from my finger and down to the inside of my arm. There is a single drop, splashed, from my elbow, onto my left red slipper, it leaves a dark, red, perfect, splash. The taste of the salt makes me close my eyes. Makes me be so very still.
And in the forced stillness, and because I was still, all eyes now turn to look up again, way up, up into the spiralling circles of words falling slowly, gently, like a million feathers, all spiralling down around us.
The whistling of the words as they spiral down, spent, not spoken is harrowing, soul-jarring.
The reality of the madness dawns and the crowd scatters, wildly dodging the words falling on their heads like shrapnel. Humans fly out in 360 degrees, running, screaming, shoving and pushing, as though driven by an explosion in their centre, the crowd disperses….
And we are left in the terrible whistling roar of a million words clattering to the cobblestones.
So many beautiful things could have been written, could have been said, posted, published, taught, and she, with her words that tear fabric into shreds, she left scarring terror on the skin of all who watched the curtains open.
Nothing more can be written, nothing more can be said, taught, posted or published. There are no more words. They are a mountainous pile on the floor.
Nothing more remains, now, bar the silence, her mouth trapped open by a word stuck between her teeth, and all the eyes in the shadows, watching, watching, calculating, waiting to see, to regard, to view, to spy, to look at what she, I and the open balcony curtains will do next.
The silence is eerie. Not a sound, not a whimper. Only the animals can make a sound now, the dogs fighting over a bloodied AND, a cat trapped and yowling under a heavy TOMORROW, crows trying to pull a squashed pastry out from beneath a bent LOVE while a twisted ME lies in a flaccid embrace with a burst pale pink ballon in the wet cobblestones of your tears.