Pulling Puzzles Apart

-Pulling Puzzles Apart-
by
Keaton Foster

“An image of grace, turned into a display of pain.”

Pacing, capable, seeing what others cannot. With wide eyes, with an open mind, with a numbness that comes from severe abuse over significant time, here I stand. Over shoulder. Behind those I pretend to love and those I pretend to need. They, those who remain always try. Even though I do my very best to give them every reason not to. They are idealistic fools, change, the greatest crux of our kind. Often they want something so bad that they will unknowingly destroy all that belongs to them in order to obtain what was never meant to be a possession.

Presently,

There, on the table, to be shambles, there is an unfinished puzzle. Started so long ago, nearly every piece has been placed. The image once a mystery is now unmistakably clear. I know it well, oh’ the hell. I will see it always, burnt into the core of my hallowing mind. I wish there was more, a way to express every finite concept and detail but there is not. There is no damn way, no damn how.

Stranger true, you, please take this, a silent man’s word for it. I am no breaker of truths but rather an exaggerator of many lies. So eager am I to dismantle, to rip it to shreds, the unfinished puzzle that is that I would do anything. Just like those who dare assemble, and those who take pieces of nothing and make it whole. Those who are brave to a fault. Those who won’t give up even as they are ruined.

As before, as forever more, those shreds will be broken down. Further and further indeed. Placed into a puddle of gas and lit with a book of matches. The ashes to remain will be placed in a hole as deep the darkness can go. I keep telling myself as I labor, no one will again know what the image would be. No one but me. All of it a lie. All of it beyond my control.

Formerly,

My dearly departed wife, the love of my life once spent weeks placing each piece. She worked the edges first. The perimeter was her thing. Once she was done, once everything could be contained, she began to place the middle all the while not knowing what the final image would be. She trusted in her faith. She believed she would see what she wanted to see, and not the reality that would come into view.

She was a helpless fool. I wish I could have been close when she finally could see, when she without question she knew what I of course could see all along. The sweet swell of her eyes, the breaking of her spine, the shattering of her heart. All of which left her, the love of my life as broken as the image that she had just spent weeks tediously piecing together. Some say that she died of a both a broken heart and mind. Some say that she took her life because she was afraid and that such fear was more than any human was meant to take. I have my own ideas, my own theories, my silent facts, which I’ll keep to myself.

Pulling puzzles apart is as always just a start, there is of course no ending but rather a constant state of ever-evolving transgression. What she saw is what others have seen. I won’t tell you because I prefer the idea that just like her you’ll never really know of course until it’s too late. Please take your time placing the outsides. The perimeter is as always king. The middle is for every fool.

Pulling puzzles apart as always, it’s just another start…




Pulling Puzzles Apart
by Keaton Foster Copyright © 2014