A Surrealist Prose Poem featuring a man in a room with the ability to end the world.

 

I’m not sure what to think anymore. The door’s locked. My head’s clear. I know I’m lucid. Yet, the world’s just blind – opaque – and we’ve convinced ourselves that this mess we’ve made is all we’ve made it out to be…

I don’t want to believe that.

I don’t.

But the steel doors I’ve locked myself into, the single chair I rest on, and the two atoms that flicker before me spell otherwise. A Fate rests upon my shoulders. The space between the atoms is grey. Two orbs, one white, one black, circumferent around one another. It’s hard not to think of the possibility of their collision.

After all, that’s what I was.

What I am.

A collision. An impossible being compromised of the prior world’s binary dilemma. Now, after all these epochs, I can’t help to think that this same shade, this black veil covering a sullied white, is all the hope we can ever muster. The world before me was bound to the same fate. My parents told me I was the change, the potential, a new dream.

And back then, when I saw myself on the shore, I thought the path hopeful.

So, it began with a garden.

I remember the garden well.

She and I made this place together. We’re still together.

Ophelia’s still with me. But her hands are banging against the door outside. She’s seen my slow descent. She’s seen my gut eating itself, my mind turning inwards, rounding like a serpent whose tail’s been cut.  

Can she understand? Can Ophelia understand why I’m here? Isolated. Alone.

I was thrust into the world alone; eternity stretched before me. Still, I understand that’s the nature of all things. To be born alone. To die alone. And the funny thing is? I know what comes after. I am the after. I am the before. That’s what I was made to be.

I see the atoms move before me and know that the life that sprung from their initial movement was meant to be more than this. I want to think it started that way. That the dream really was supposed to come true. But I don’t.

Not anymore.

And this life we made, the life we did make, has been good. Ophelia, me, my children… It’s been everything I could have dreamed -- asked for -- yet my children, my children’s children, and all those generations I have seen after our jumpstart…. Well, it all amounted to this.

Disaster.

The ghosts of my parents haunt me. They are a specter within me. A phantasm that holds its gentle grasp around my eternal heart. “I am the end of all things,” said my father. “I am the forge that births worlds, people, universes,” said mother. “You have one chance, most of the time,” said mother. “It’s the way of things.”

“We made our choice,” father said. “Life must continue.”

And for a time, I believed them. I believed in their words. And when given the choice to do it all over again, I would. But I had one chance. That’s the way of things. Despite Ophelia’s knocks at the door, she can’t decide. It’s always been up to me.

It’s always been up to me.

I made this world with her.

I gave her the ability to grow the garden.

I decided to keep the spark to end it all.

That was my burden. And I have carried it since we began again, but I’m not sure if I want to anymore.

The atoms still dance before me, taunting me with a universal reset – a clean slate. I am the man with a gun that could kill the world. I am the axis upon which you spin. Maybe, I should let her in. Maybe, I should let her convince me to leave this space. To leave the power at the center of the world we built. Maybe. Maybe.

“Adam,” she says. “Adam, I need you to listen to me. I need you to listen and know that I understand you. I understand what you’re going through. I lost her, too.”

I hear her words. I hear her plea. She’s always known that I balanced on a knife’s edge. From the shore till now, we’ve known the power we wield, and still, we gave it to our children. We gave them a choice. And that choice, that chance, got her killed.

My daughter.

Our daughter.

“Let me in, Adam. I don’t want you to be alone.”

Alone. Alone. Alone.

“I know, Ophelia. I know. I… I need time to think.”

“Adam, listen to me. Now’s not the time. Your son is grieving. Your grandchildren are grieving. This is our first loss in a long time, Adam. You can’t let her passing destroy you. She wouldn’t have wanted it that way.”

Want. Wanted. Who would want to continue after this?

“All parents ever wish is to see their kids grow up before they go,” said mother.

I fear my temptation towards Death. I feel the absurdity of the release it promises. Thanatos, Mort, Tod… Where are our lives in the end?

“We were guardians… a constant… eternal. But not undying,” said my father.

And from this knowledge, I understand the wisdom gained in his passing. I knew what needed to take place then, but now? Now I’m lost.

“Adam. Let me in.”

Her words are soft. They’ve always been. She’s sweet. She’s honest. She’s pure. I could not have asked for more. Yet, my thoughts betray me now. How can I reconcile my daughter’s death with the promise of my wife’s embrace?

Let me in.

If I do, I’m afraid I won’t follow through with what I wished --

The end.

The atoms dance before me. They flicker and pull apart, only to come close enough right before they touch. But they won’t. Not without my allowance, and this, I think, is the state of all beings. Even those that are eternal may be overcome by death. Even those who harness life itself can pass like the sands. But I see what my wife, and the life we made, have taught me, what the wisdom of years has seeded within me.

It’s up to us to keep them living.

That’s all we can do.

So I stand from my chair, turning my back upon the treasured weapon that lies at the heart of the world, and I face my wife, who stands there, waiting for me.

I let her in.

That’s all we can do.

That’s all we can do.