Nightspore walked into the garden,
wabi-sabe with a twist of Monet…
…he remembered the pain he was
in when he was young…not the pain
itself—which was gone—just the
memory that he had once been
in pain. He could not actually recall
the experience of the pain itself.
Not only was the pain gone, but also
all the tricks he used to hide the pain
from others; the faces he prepared to
meet the other faces, the story of
himself he handed out like leaflets to
anyone he encountered to explain so
he could hide the truth, constantly
pretending for the sake of appearance.
Nightspore remembered lines from
Quasimodo: “Even my sadness,
perhaps, has changed /as if I were not
my own/ forgotten, even by me.”
There was a knock at the door. Night-
spore opened it.
“Krag! My old friend! Do come in!”