The Voice, followed by an evening story.

Do not make it seven pieces, do not make it five. I twiddled at the keys slightly, unable to start a paragraph, much as I have been unable to start a 'fine' sentence as of late. Just be honest, I push, just breathe and feel the words of which you are saying. And when unable to say, write.
It always feels as I used to, but a line has faded somewhere between reality and fictional wonderment of every day life. I blur both into one as I might enter into sleep, I delve into the other as I might into a series of daily tasks. Have I no emotion in any of these actions?
Am I losing the passion, I so often ask of myself.
Speak as if you are alone! It cries, and then the words leak feebly from my mouth, such as the slow drool of an aging dog might, and because I try to force into them an air of authority, and confidence, they shrill and drag themselves further forward with a brute force that does not suit them in the slightest.
I lose my audience.
The ability to speak! How simple it all seems!
But when you have spent a life nodding and scribbling, or simply just laughing, where does true speech and impressive, or noticeable, delivery lay? It is within me, awaiting its voluptuous spill, awaiting it's moment as a large soulful woman with clarity and a deep voice waits to enter the metaphorical stage (the room in which I am at the time) and spill a delicious, harmonious, attention grabbing song?
How is it that I am able to type this, to speak my mind as it eases out it's muscles, and deliver? Yes, even in my mind I lose the word I am looking for every sentence, but still it is there. Still a wall is dividing me from true passion.

And so very what if my voice should not match nor suit that of the words that it shapes and lets? Must it matter so that I do not 'voice' the part? For if the soul if there... it must breathe outwardly as well as inwardly. Oh or else it should sit in the far corner and call now and then for guidance, but then return to it's cupped stutter, slowly becoming ignorant of the world beyond the wall at it's back.
My soul, you are not weak and hidden, I know. But doubt, you cruel and unconfident thing, you thrive at the door, a burly bouncer laughing, heaving that large, hard chest and pounding at your own thighs. I am hilarious to you, my poor voice, I am laughable!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Tonight, after many an hour of over-work, I paced home with aching bones in Autumn's late arrival and offer of a damp night. It bled around me, the leaves falling - late - from the trees, dusting the edge of each pavement and sloping into the roads that I forget the very boundaries myself.
It dipped in the light, shadows threw at each wall and a chilled splash of wind nuzzled at my skirts occasionally. The night was shaded only, it appeared, in orange, browns and yellows with obvious shading.
'Should I lower my pace', came the inevitable trail of thoughts in the first quiet I had experienced for 14 hours, 'the enemy should surely dash from the nearby bushes, alarmingly fast and with reason, oh my bag should be gone into the night without a battle, and should I battle...'
The centre of the road did not feel safe, the shadows grew deeper momentarily and I returned within sight of a 24 hour type venue. I passed it by casually, as if never needing it's relief.
It believed me.
Further home I did tread, closer with each step and yet more fatigued with each two.
A shadow far off danced on a hospital wall, I eyed it in a vision looking out in particular for unexplained movement, and I kept contact only for seconds. But what a dance it gave, what horrid shape it revealed. It was the shape not a creature in any story has been described as being, so grotesque that you irrationally run the thoughts of falling in love there and then. And what to do once having loved, oh your life to be a wreck in it's trail.
And it is a trail only traced by night, possibly only by autumn, against hospital walls and with magnificent orange light shows.
And then it came. As if it had been waiting for me it's life, as if not another in the world had seen it, it seemed to surround me, it seemed to stalk me, and it became obvious that all my life I had been stalked by this creature, and I should have known! Ignorance swelled in the corner, and the dirty, throaty laugh of the doubt-bouncer wriggled in from the lit door!
It danced not only on the wall now, but unseen upon every surface, it tickled at my feet - they so unaware, it rippled with the damp winds and it took the corner before I did...
And I approached the bridge. Brisk at first, with tire. But then, on realisation of a caring point, calm with edge. And so many edges, I could fall a thousand times from this bridge alone.
Within one moment I was suddenly surrounded by a lashing ocean and then released back into reality again, cleansed and salted. Not pure, but safe. The night air of early October crisp and sweet, not salted and bitter.
I knew then that I would lay upon that bench, crying, one day.

Fear erupted me at just leaving this point, I could have slept there, so liberating was the feeling.
Do not let the thought drift that way, it seemed to say, oh on gaurd as the Doberman of an Essex night.
On gaurd as the man alone in a round room with five plain, unknown doors rattling around him.
On my own as the night intended, and sleeping within his arms no matter where the night may have placed him, or I.

It is a sacred thing, to love. For I have liked many, but Love has only been with one. And how silly you do feel once you realise you have never been in love before. How once and many had never been this way, never sunk you into the night with promise of release at the bottom into foreign beauty of lands.
Sleep now, it wills me. You have written enough.