My watcher gazes upon me, great despair and longing seeping through her gently fluttering lashes. She lives a life of torment, a life filled with a depth of pain and depravity that rivals my own. Closer she wishes to draw, trying – always trying, but the measure of her success is a cruel and harsh one that denies, not grants, the wants of those like us. Unable to do more, she watches.
She watches as I sink ever further into the squalor that is my self-imposed exile, my place of preciously preserved pains, the darkest recesses of my mind where even I cannot find respite from my own deranged ramblings. Gasping for a breath that will never come, hope a thing lost to a moment that can never be regained, I will forever dwell in this chasm of nowhere. Capable of infusing life into me once more, yet unable to wade such a distance, she must simply watch as I succumb.
She watches as I prance about in this tattered garb, seeming to most a thing so giddy; a toy bright and shiny – all the while, inside… nothing but a fool. She sees my cracks, my flaws, all that makes me unworthy. She is witness to the tarnish that dulls my plating, the rust that flakes my surface, the debris that hinders my step. She gropes at the pile of destroyed dreams, hoping in vain to free me; the more she digs, the deeper the rubble becomes. She must watch as I succumb to what others have done, and what has become of me.
She watches as I shatter into innumerable shards, only to suffer my tears as I collect each delicate fragment to me; insistent upon rebuilding my ruined castle once more. Tears of acid crawl down my cheeks, the madness that accompanies them the crumbling of the world – my world – should they ever truly be unleashed. A steady stream of tangible harm inflicted by so many, each droplet a testament to the life I bear. Her desperate plea for me to hush heard only as an echo in my ear. Her arm stretched towards me, wanting so much to offer reprieve, is hindered by obstacles both beloved and unfair. She must watch as I succumb to what others have undone within me.
She watches as I flay open my own flesh for allowing moments of weakness, glimpses of joy, lies of happiness that happen in an instant, gone all too quickly. Brief encounters, an hour, perhaps two. Touching, loving, seeing, hearing; feeling – breathing; for the first time in so long, breathing. A small step that leads to a brighter existence, a false step placed upon undulating ground. A promise of the sweetest forever, but no promise ever made, a faith always held – a mourning that shall never end, my forever, my reality. This she must watch as I succumb not to what others have undone, but what I have done to destroy me.
Would I give so much more for even a lie of something less, if that lie was not this? With all the wasted remains of me, I would… But my watcher stands as guard. She will not allow one to crumble, for the other would fall, no longer even the loathsome wreckage that now exists. Scalding tears pour in a cascade of deafening silence from her eyes. She must always watch me from behind a glass wall that cannot be allowed to shatter for all that would be lost.
A pile of forever swept to the side so that the tendrils of this now never break for what should have been.
~ Nina D’Arcangela
© Copyright 2012 Nina D’Arcangela. All Rights Reserved.
Pen of the Damned 
Oh my Nina
I am swept away in the beauty of your words
Excellent
Sad
Poignant
Amazing!
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Leslie, that truly leaves me speechless. Thank you for such a gracious and stunning compliment! I am genuinely humbled (and giddy at the same time). 🙂
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Breathtaking words that rattle the soul and scream for the pain, decimation, and longing to be heard. As always, Nina, your prose both humbles and amazes me. Each sentence is a veritable feast to be reflected upon and savored. Thank you for sharing your ever incredible talents!
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Thank you Adri! As always, you hear the message in each piece of my emotive muse, and your appreciation for it is as beautiful as each piece is painful. Thank you Goddess Noir!
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I very much enjoyed the flow of emotion and the way each sentence was another degree on the microscope to analyse those feelings and their purpose. In reading this, I was a lifelong blind man, never experiencing the world’s imagery, and a talented art critic was describing a masterpiece to me.
Adriana said it best, a feast to be reflected upon and savored.
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Thanks Tyr! You are exactly right in your interpretation that this particular muse is a road of emotive analysis, not just a moment in time. Thank you for your kind words as always and for appreciating my cracked and somewhat broken mind! 🙂
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Dang! What a strong emotional piece.
Somewhere between poetry and prose. Nicely done.
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Thank you very much Jennifer! I truly appreciate the compliment. 🙂
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Nina, you constantly take your heart, wring and deposit the pain & beauty contained within & deposit it into my own until I am left breathless for more. I don’t know how you do it – the gift you have in transferring your emotion – but it is just that, a gift.
I’ve always admired your writing style & your bravery, if you wish to call it that, in the way you expose yourself. Whether you do such a thing or if it is just your inner muse taking control of your hand, it hardly matters. What matters is that I appreciate the talent you are, the writer you are, & most importantly, I appreciate & admire the person you are.
An amazing post for the Pen of the Damned!! I hope now that other readers will recognize all that you are!!
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Joe – knock me over with a feather! As I’ve said before, I could easily find myself ripping my own post down and inserting your comment in it’s place!
Whether the ‘she’ I speak of is me, or my other, the emotion – pain, joy, longing, elation, despair, desperation – all of it is genuine. I sometimes read my own ramblings and am shocked by the depth of feeling that even I wasn’t aware was inside of me slamming against the walls to get out. As to bravery, I’d probably be the first to shout ‘the sky is falling’, but writing has always been a form of salvation for me – a way of expressing myself without letting the words pass my lips (that makes sense in my head). All I can say in complete honesty is this is just me…
Thank you for the kind things you wrote about me, again – I’m floored and honored to know you think so highly of me! :}
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Nina – Reading this was like being caught in a large whirlpool. I felt myself pulled by your intense emotions, distress, and valiant struggle against the inevitable pull into a dark abyss.
Having trudged through periods of existence (the word “life” seems to pleasant for those times) that were filled with self-loathing and vicious circles of attempt and failure at happiness, what you composed resonated in a deep part of me.
As I read, I felt a confusion and suffocation from the frantic attempts at something positive while being burried by the detritus of blind and fruitless struggles.
Loved it
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Thanks Zack! This piece is an accumulation of different moments that piled up and seemed to make a cohesive whole. The tug back and forth is the hardest part of all. But as you say ‘life’ seems too pleasant a word for it, but that is exactly what it is. I’m glad you enjoyed the piece so much, but I’m always a bit sad to know someone else identifies with the conflicting feelings in my writing, while at the same time relieved to know I’m actually conveying myself within my prose.
Thank you again for your compliment and appreciation! 🙂
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Feel more relief than sadness. Your ability to take such complex and personal emotions, and forge them into a string of words that accurately depicts such raw feeling is fantastic. You are definitely conveying yourself within your prose.
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Thank you Zack! I genuinely appreciate you saying so!
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Lyrical and solemn, Nina – a word that keeps popping up lately in our conversations, it seems! I love the emotional intensity of the piece, and agree with Jennifer above that it straddles the line between prose and poetry.
One concept kept coming back to me as I read this, and it was ‘deconstruction’. Everything seems to be disassembled, taken apart, crumbling, leaving the voice painfully vulnerable and genuine. A powerful piece of writing!
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Yes, the word solemn does seem to be popping up a lot lately between you and I, but then again – we are the Damned! This is a very emotional piece for me as this one is very close to home as they say. Most of what I write in what I refer to as ‘my voice’ is muse that is not quite poetry, not fully prose. It’s just a mash-up of me; and it is always extremely emotive, whether it is happy, sad or otherwise.
Deconstruction would have been a perfect title for this piece. Its layers being peeled back, to be built up, only to be stripped away again and again… Thank you for the compliments, they are always greatly appreciated – particularly on the more personal pieces. 🙂
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So lovely: the interplay of your words creating within the majesty of your poetic prose a look into what is and was. Reformation of the Damned! A very lovely piece, Nina.
Blaze
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Thank you Blaze! Pain can be a beautiful torment if you learn to embrace it, and incredible inspiration if funneled creatively. Thank you again for such a nice compliment! 🙂
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Your prose is always spot on, raw with emotion. It’s like you flay yourself open with each post, leaving your innermost core exposed for the world to scrutinize. It take a lof of guts to do what you do, and with such wonderful prose. We all have our watcher, and damn if that watcher hasn’t stood by and almost let us get killed from time to time.
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Thank you Hunter! The ‘voice’ that I prefer to write in is always raw with emotion. Shiny candy coating on the outside, crushed up glass & razor blades mixed into the gooey-yummy center! You’re right, we all have our watcher, and sometimes their job is to watch us fall so that we can learn to pick ourselves up again, or learn to accept their help in doing so. I know you’ve held the role by no choice of your own, and I admire you for it.
The thing about me is what you see, is what you get – you just have to be willing to look, not just glance. ;}
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