I haven't heard from you.

Perhaps I am impatient.  Time runs like sand through my soul, pouring
past, grains blurred.

I am afraid.

Have I said what I ought not?

I sit by this electronic gateway, waiting, peering out for visitors like a
New York grandmother at her peephole, squinting out of the apartment into
the hall, scared of who might be found, of who might have rung the bell.

I sit by my machine -- so small a window, so safe -- afraid. Afraid to be
seen now, once I've undressed myself.  Not knowing what to say after my
soul has been bared.

Perhaps I should never have spoken.

Of everything I fear most the mask.  The superficial clothing I
wear to hide myself, strips making an ancient Pharoah of me, trapped in
sacrcophagus.  Crowned with a life-mask in death.

Last time I spoke, I laughed and smiled, wailing inside my temple, my
pyramid, my tomb.  My soul was in transit between worlds.  I could not
speak the truth that I had written.  I ran out of pleasant lies to tell,
stammered, and hung up.  (Voice is a portal much too large.)

I have been foolish.  I can't survive truth-telling.

I have scratched open the sore and the scab will not form.

I will be quiet now.  I am sorry.



[I have forgotten how to play my part.  I cannot remaster gentle silence.

I will regret this message, later. 

Why must I care so much what people think?]

                                    -- CSA, 25-Feb-1998