Light

Jack

I don't know what happens to me when I'm not at the lighthouse.
I don't know where I go.
I never remember.
There is just.....nothing.
One moment I'm there and then I'm there again. The moment is just different.
I feel it's different.
It's just that....I don't feel different.
Time passes and I just sort of exist outside of it. Or....not at all.

I've never thought too much about it before.
How can you even start to think about something like this.
You can't.
It's sort of like asking someone to think of nothing. You're always thinking about something.
Whether you're conscious of it or not.
But nothing.
How do you explain nothing?
It's not silence.
Silence is something.
It's not darkness.
There always is something left in darkness, even if it's just the absence of light.

No.

Nothing.

It hurts my brain to wonder.
Where I go, what I do....what I don't do.....what I'm unable to do.....what others do while I'm left oblivious and just.....not there.

I've never really thought about it before. I just let it happen because there is nothing I can do about it.
I never feel it. There is no ominous tingling that start somewhere in my body that let's me know I'm about to disappear.
No sense of vertigo or a sound or.......

My existence exists out of snapshots of consciousness all strung together while I'm trying to somehow string a coherent story out of it all.

Maybe I've never dared to wonder about those non-moments in between because; how truly scary is the existence of absolute nothingness and then the option of you getting lost in it only to come up for air occasionally whenever its tides allow you to.

I've never wondered.

Until now.

Until him.

He has made me wonder.

He makes me wonder where I go when I'm not with him. What he does when I'm not there. Where he goes in turn.
If he is alright.

I think there is a bit of nothing in him as well.
His is just different from mine.
His nothing is much closer to a something.
Something that makes him not want to be anymore.
A something that makes him want to kneel down on the floor of an old room in an old lighthouse and flood his own veins with something lethal and.....ending.

He makes me wonder if there will ever be an end for me.
If time even notices me anymore.
If I am still part of its stream or if I'm just helplessly bobbing along.....like driftwood......flotsam.
The debris of some tragedy long forgotten but somehow left behind.

I never asked him his name, that first time we met.
I haven't needed to ask someone their name in such a long time.
People come and go to the lighthouse but they never see me, they never hear me and all I am usually able to see or hear from them are garbled fragments and over-saturated images.

Things are different with him.
And I don't know why.
Maybe he exists a little bit outside of time as well.
Or maybe it's the nothing inside of him resonating with my own.
I don't know.
But he makes me want to know.

I watch him where he sleeps on the bed.
Silent and tired and alone.

I should ask him his name the next time we meet.

The room is dark and outside millions and millions of stars cover the night-sky like points of light reflecting off of rolling waves.

I blink.

And the sky is suddenly different.

And the moment is new.