I step out of my house and I see flickering lights everywhere. I chase the lights and plunge at the illusory happiness, the desperation of my plunges tempered only with the civility of my upbringing. But those lights recede further and further and I end up staring at a dead end. Sometimes, I try to group the lights together and give them a collective shape, a shape which conveys a meaning and a purpose. But the lights rebel. They are neon lights after all. They modulate their brilliance and their hues according to the vagaries of their mood. They are only to entice, not to lead or to enlighten the path.
When I retire at night in the bed, I hear the sound of something dripping, trickling down. Alarmed, I switch on the lights and check every faucet in the house. Everything seems fine. All the taps are tightly wound up, with the exact amount of torque, like the way they should be. Relieved, I retire to my bed once more. But the sound keeps coming, the periodic trickle of an overflow which is being restrained against its wishes. Almost like a machine and with a skill which tooks years of practice, I numb myself to the sound, relegating it to the background, a solitary jarring note in an otherwise perfect medley. And I sleep. I sleep my night away.
I have a hole in my heart. It needs patching up.
