Façade

Behind blossom fair
Gnarled image wrought in scarred knots
Pain cloaked by beauty

Cipher Cafe

I vanished today.

I was sitting at a sidewalk cafe. I had finished eating the last of my sandwich, and was sipping a cup of coffee. I was in no hurry to get back to the office. The day was pleasant, the breeze fresh. People of every shape and hue were swirling by, on their way to somewhere else.

Then it happened.

I realized that no one was looking at me. Or acknowledging me. Or noticing me. It was as if I did not exist. At that moment, my eyes lost focus on the world around me, and latched onto a spot suspended a few feet above the street. There was nothing there but air... and my attention. The edges around me bent and blurred. I slid out of contact with my surrounding reality.

I vanished.

In the midst of the city, I felt utterly alone. I wandered within my own thoughts, aware of the rush of blood in my veins, the rasp of breath in my lungs. I grasped at ideas, half formed, as they floated just out of reach. Time ground to a halt, hanging poised. Tick. Tock. Tick.

Tock.

The sand began to flow again, hissing relentlessly through the hourglass. The world snapped back into focus, as dozens of conversations coalesced into a polyglot of prose.

I considered my now cold cup of coffee. The breeze had died, and the afternoon heat bore down on my back. I cleared my table, and merged back into the masses.

Shelter From The Storm

Speed Demon

Vortex

Perception bent, skewed
Perspective twisted and torqued
Pathway home. Fear not.

Beauty can be found
In unexpected places
Outside your front door

Did He Look?

Did he look beyond
the sweep of cherry blossoms
at Arlington's graves?