CONFESSION

brother unburden yourself to me. my confidence is of an unyielding strength. know that whatever transpires between us it is cast in the fraternal forge of our surreptitiously manifested kinship. no one shall ever know what is outside of these rooms. in that land of nod where the edge of reality meets the unknowable chasm of the void, yawning so into nothingness 

those horrible creatures that stalk around in the unyielding darkness of that eternal night ought not to be the subject of our quandary. the unfathomable fauna native to that nocturnal country of the exterior is but for those of that provenance to contemplate and confront. for you or i brother, to consider thus those external to the already threadbare fabric constituting the veils of ritual with which we deftly defer, to ponder those nameless inhabitants of the infinite is to invite that churning chaos into your own home. to lay out the fancy china and prepare the suckling pig for the boundless cimmerian shade of death’s unknowable empire. 

we are not gardeners brother, we have neither the horticultural skill nor temper to cultivate the amaranthine twilight in this the plot of our knowable lives. this multidimensional potters field of the immortal on top of which our pithy little quarrels and romances play out upon. them the ancient paupers of before the dawn of man give to our time here the consideration of what one gives to the inner life of a beetle before carelessly stomping it out. pulverizing us, such as that beetle, into the transcendent immensity outside those doors we seemingly perceive.

the flickering red neon of time’s exit sign

brother i am perhaps needlessly obfuscating the destination of this prospective journey; but the place to which we travel is fraught with opportunities for the ferocious retribution of temporality scorned. liable as we are to unleash the unbridled force of the ultra dimensional actors whose interests our very presence outside the house so puts at risk. oh yes time is not immune to the jealousy which so motivates the base and contemptible in man. it is just as capable of losing its composure “when” perceiving a risk, a risk to the continued machinations of the ethereal engineers whose immaculate calculations so illustrate our lives. to proceed with caution is of itself already too reckless, we move only in the light.

yes i know how tempting those darkened corridors may seem or the thought of those perpetual vistas one might glimpse out the bay windows which we pass, but we avert our gaze brother, we are but guests in this house. that together with our blind groping in the dark, in these unfamiliar rooms, we may begin to determine the shape and the depth and chart out from such a point our way back into the grace of the lord’s light. so brother, it behooves me that i must compel you to please stick with the pack when we are conducting our efforts to establish our coordinates in this spectral foreign land. 

do not force us to cut you loose, for make no mistake brother, when it comes to the crushing weight of capital H History, we, your very own brothers, will, out of hand.

— Dan R. dropped out of community college twice and wasted his twenties playing bike messenger. He lives on Minnesota’s North Shore and is allegedly a Catholic again.