…from a vision and a memory allowed…
…My thanks to Mr Jess Header for his patience and time…
Splinters from the Source by John Riley
IT IS AN ESTABLISHMENT ROOTED at the corner of crossroads called The Halfway House and built of hard stone set down upon the earth centuries ago.
A place where lost souls frequent and drown their sorrows with half-empty glasses. Upon the tabletop, the news is a familiar headline and destined for chip papers tomorrow.
Two gather, huddled around and bent over like hags staring into the abyss.
One has a question while the room shadows grow darker around the edge. Might a light extinguished? Or do you not notice the night creeps closer?
What can we remember? Not much, if anything at all. Let me say my friend, you are a good listener.
Remember the wailing banshee that sings out in minor key laments? A sad refrain atop the gates where solemn processions pass that parade of lost souls, and the truth is, my friend, we should have endured it to the end.
I’ve still one more round, even though last orders called again, and back there, the night holds onto such strange things.
Deciding there would be no more tomorrows, a time when downed a glass full of sorrows, sang a little rhyme mother taught as a babe to lay down to die. But, in the blinking of an eye, returning on a road straight to hell.
I guess I’m trying to help you in some small way. You’ve forgotten what you know and what came before, friend. I’m telling you, fella, you’re familiar, a little deja vu, see, the same old soul just wearing a different overcoat.
Stay a little while, take one more for the road and trust me, see it out, live for a new tomorrow, or it’ll be my round again and in the company of another. Are we the same or no different?
-end-