A Void

A Void

by Ryan Billington

Written January 16, 2005

Winter of JuniorYear

I am a phantom, an illusion;

Going through life as a ghost.

You cannot kill me; I cannot die.

Instead, I wander through my world.

I am unnoticed; I am invisible.

I search the sea of expressionless faces.

“Acknowledge me, affirm my existence,” I cry

But only downcast eyes glance away;

Grey, like the clouds, the concrete, the buildings;

Walling their world into a cell; a prison inescapable

Trapped in their misunderstanding of life

Empty blank eyes reflect their minds

Accustomed to hollowness, to the void inside them

How I long to fill them with color

This world I have bought, will you still reject me?

What is this life that you have abandoned me to live?

I am the trickle of water in this frozen winter spring

I am the sun fighting to pierce the haze that surrounds you

You try to contain me in a building and steeple

To fit me into this colorless void of your life

To make me a piece of your puzzle that will change to fit your desires

Oh my children, how long will you turn away?

Why do you choose this emptiness?

I am not made to fit into your puzzle, your confusion

Neither were you

I already have a picture for you

Made from the fragments of my broken body

You sit in a pew, expecting me to take the haze of life away.

I reach out, trying to finally grasp your heart

But I run into the cold gray wall that you have built around it

You leave; feeling abandoned by me, distant, unseen.

I follow you down the gray sidewalks

I have never left you, I‘ve always been right here

Behind you, at your side, staring into your barren soul

I try to touch you

My scarred hand passes through your cheek.

In this void, filled with nothing

The only One that truly exists has become a phantom

Your shrouded faces drift by

Hidden in disguises, living a falsehood

Masks that smile and sparkle; facades that cover you up

Made from the clay of this empty void

You spend so much time in delusion, trying to hide who you are

But the masks keep cracking into emptiness and nothing can put them back together.

Painted white by winter’s chill, and black by the darkness inside you

If mixed together they form the color of your vacant stare

The masks smile; they speak; they seek to conceal and forget

But in your eyes lives an emptiness that cannot be hidden

A longing that you will never be able to veil

I look out over the world I created

Twisted, distorted, and deformed into this void that I see

A world bought back by the living color that flows through my veins

When will they accept the life in me?

Instead they choose to live in this darkness

Actors, surviving through life

Covered in masks

Covered in grayness

Hastening about in the bleakness of winter

Filling their minds and starving their souls

You know my name and claim to know me

But when will you let my water beyond the walls of your mind?

When will you let it reach the cracked and barren surface of your heart?

Even now you shrug me off.

Will you ever be wholly mine?

The conflict is here: grayness covers your body, but I desire soul

Will you still choose the void?