It was 3 a.m.
& I was having trouble sleeping
once more.

My mind drifted
& wandered off
with wonder & anxiety;
searching for some kind of reason
between the shadowed crevices
of my brain;
twisting & turning about,
following paths
that sometimes went somewhere;
other times nowhere;
& more times dissolving
into something else altogether
only to repeat the whole cycle once again.

It was a vicious cycle of insomnia.

Kyrie stirred next to me
& woke up.

With the big,
pale blue October moon
shining through our bedroom window,
she lazily looked at me
with her big pale blue eyes
& asked me what was wrong.

I told her the usual:
restless curiosity.

With a sigh
filled with the world's sadness
& sympathy,
yet quieter than a murmur of a murmur,
Kyrie sat up & got dressed.

I was already sitting up & was dressed.
These bouts of curiosity
always kept me prepared
to go nowhere at all,
but still, I was prepared,
just in case
things finally decided
to take a course
& to go off into the beyond…

wherever that may be.

Kyrie returned
& suggested we go for a drive.

I nodded in agreement & she took over
from there. Walking down to the garage,
we hopped into her little two-door
Volkswagen Golf GTI
&




S H O T O F F




into the early morning darkness
like a bullet fired from a gun.

At
nearly
ninety
miles
an hour,
she drove
through the
winding streets
of our world,
a world that
was only beginning to realize it was a
new day, as she wove in
& out of
the sparse traffic like a maniacal Formula One driver, leaving
the still groggy commuters
in
-s-t-i-t-c-h-e-s-.-



Turning to the
left,
then
into the right, jumping
between
lanes as if her car were the
two legs of an ice skater,
going about in a chaotic synchronization,
taking a w i d e t u r n here,
a sharp turn there;
but she seemed to prefer the tight ones,
those
seemingly
uncontrolled
jerks
that
were
handled
with
nothing
less
than
full,
complete,
& total control.


Sometimes she slowed,
carefully going around a bend,
only to stomp on the gas,
then braking almost immediately after,
then firing off again;
fast,


s l o w ,


fast—fast—


slow,
braiding a trail that took me to places I had never seen before, let alone thought about existing within our little town, turning onto darkened side roads & barely used countryside lanes; forgotten trails & disused tracks; routes which led off to somewhere, nowhere, something else altogether, coming back around as assuredly as the moon in its orbit, restarting the whole process yet again, echoing the images & experiences before, trying their best to relate to the new & familiar, but ultimately unknown course in its groove.

Eventually, we pulled off
& onto a scenic spot
which overlooked the city,
a little alcove
that was able to accommodate
a single vehicle
& held a single, amber light
which hung from a single light post,
the only one for miles around.

The air stood silent as the new day
continued to make its way
towards the horizon,
creeping over the surface
of our pale blue dot of a rock.

Kyrie began to open the moonroof
of her car, slowly revealing the starry sky
above.

The solitary lamp post
shut off in a timely fashion,
even though the sun had yet to rise,
leaving behind the twinkling void
of the cosmos beyond.

I let my eyes take in the sight
of the blinding points of light
which hung above me,
stretching over the curtain of darkness
which always threatened to engulf
our little mote of dust
we happen to call home.
I let my eyes receive their fill of light,
more than their fill,
letting them get washed over
with lumination,
overflowed with fiery glimmers
of the burning helium & hydrogen
of unimaginably distant suns.
Suns, a strange word to call a star,
even though our sun is a star,
a small one at that,
it is still a star,
but when you flip things around
& call the stars suns,
then technically there is no such thing
as NIGHT - it is always the daytime;
The sun is always lighting our planet.

During my self-imposed wonder-wander,
Kyrie had gotten out of the car
& was standing near the treeline nearby,
just behind the sole light post,
& was staring at something
on the ground.

I shook the gossamers of thought
from my head
& walked over to where she stood
& stopped next to her.





Down at her feet lay a mangled mess of fur,
flesh,
& delicate bone;
a gnawed off ear,
a broken paw,
a lolling little pink tongue
from a dislodged jaw —
the remains of a cat.





Kyrie, it must be stated,
was an animal lover,
& so was I by proxy,
but at that moment;
in that far-off place;
in that early morning silence,
neither of us said a word.

Her hand held mine
& I held hers in return.
She leaned her head against mine
& said something
which only echoed distantly
in the labyrinth of my ear,
yet I could not hear her words.

Everything was becoming
foreign, alien,
lost, found,
lost again, recovered,
uncovered, discovered,
yet all remaining shrouded in mystery
in my mind & understanding.

She kept on talking,
whispering in what seemed to be
a multitude of languages,
& I replied in the off-color
of my only tongue:
the groggy words of insomnia & dreams,
& yet we understood each other,
having both stumbled upon
the dark language
of sorrow & love;
of regret & suffering;
of sympathy & apathy,
all gnarling & winding
throughout our thoughts
& our emotions,
taking root somewhere deep within
& grabbing hold of
who we are,
what we are —
how we are.

There we stood,
in our own universe within a world,
for what passed for an eternity,
but even eternity couldn't hold off
my attention forever,
& my eyes began to wander about,
scanning, searching,
looking, finding,
losing, distorting,
coming into focus,



a n d d i s a p p e a r i n g



altogether,
the world around us;
around me;
around you,
until the language we spoke ceased to exist
the instant we stopped speaking its words,
because everyone knows
those dark languages,
sacred languages,
rarely survive.

& as my eyes found
what they were looking for,
I turned to face the image
of something in the shadows of the forest.

Kyrie was speaking again
further away than before:
a distant cry from a distant star
from a distant Galaxy,
so far, far away.

My eyes traced an invisible track
to that image among the shadows,
its form coming into being;
into shape,
morphing & changing
until finally settling down into its true self,
revealing to me what it was,
yet remained truly & all encompassingly
unknown.

My mind
raced
&
paced
&
tried looking for the words,
but the words were simply wasted
in the effort,
& so a thought blossomed
in my mind from the seeds of my intrigue:





if the cat was a sight to see,






I told myself,























then Kyrie ought to see what killed the cat.









FIN

© Nascent Epilogues