The Void; or Contemplating the Agony of Fantine

It is the ephemeral moment
Passing silently,
As if it were not there.
It is dishonest somehow,
It robs me of my freedom.

Ticking softly, swiftly.
The hand turns slowly, yet
All too fast.

What has been achieved therein?

And to that question, such elegant emptiness.

Were I as dishonest as the moment is,
I would studder an answer.
B-b-but...I cared about people
I would studder.

Now I look on them with cold eyes.
Their eyes ask me questions.
Their eyes alternatively accuse and feel pity for me.
How I hate those eyes.
How I hate them.

"There was a time when men were kind,
When their voices were soft,
And their words exciting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time, then it all went wrong..."

Humming in my mind. I wonder at it.

I have no right to her pain.
I have neither the right to hate the pity nor indifference nor the false love
nor the fake care nor the question,
The question so urgently asked with their eyes
"Kristen what is wrong?"

What is wrong, you ask?
What is wrong is that I tried my best to do nothing but care for people.
And those people are empty,
And now their emptiness is inside of me.
I can't blame them for their feelings
They have no right to ask me mine.

And now you ask me to forgive, you internet lookers,
Fraudulent admirers of a writer you do not understand!
Can't you see how I wish you to be gone from me,
From this place, my haven, for strangers to read my words?!

Damn you, liar! Don't you know that I know you lie?

And yes, I see the irony in those words,
I see that if there was a private loathing that then
That loathing should be within the confines of some
Private pages. This is publication.

I wish it to be a publication of my screaming the truth.

But I only wish to publish some reason for my actions,
I wish for you to understand me in my livid rage.
I wish you could see into me and see what I've endured.
I hate you. I loathe you so for missing it.

"I dreamed a dream of time gone by
When hope was high and life worth living.
I dreamed that love would never die.
I dreamed the God would be forgiving."

There. So I said it.

The heart that once beat for the world no longer beats.
The heart that once, within my chest, held a love,
A compassion, has long since been bled dry.

And now some scarecrow has to come and dismember my soul.
Some phantasm of truth, some sage of thought,
Some page of a silent novel.

They gawk at me as if I were some animal they've conquered.

I know that I've become irrational about things too.
You would say it yourself. With your eyes.
I am.
Aren't I?
You look at me, incredulous, as if you want to wrap me up in something.
Is it your arms?
Is it some blanket?
Or the merciless chains of some trap?

So I sit here daily on trial for the love I once felt,
For that love, obviously, was some sort of sinful waste of time
And the best way to live is to be as base as possible?
No, my dear, no.

That void exists to be denied. That is the point of such a void.

The ephemeral moment,
Passes quickly, silently,
Through the void, through the day.

"Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted.
There was no ransom to be paid,
No song unsung, no wine untasted,
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dreams to shame."



Is it true? I grieve for Fantine and her situation.
I know that such horrors that she faced in the name of righteous love
I have not faced-
Nor have I been spit upon.
Yet it feels that way. It feels by their departure.
The way the turn, the way the gossip.
Their fake smiles and their false tone of voice.
I perceive it.

And they think that they're the only ones that notice things.
I stand for more than that, or at least I stood.


I will live my life.

I will not let the pain matter.
My feeble gifts, my silly tones.
My laughter in the silence all alone.

I don't know why you wish to sabotage me with your silence.
Knowing the ache it brings me.
Knowing the hope they wished for me,
Ah, they, they with their innocent eyes and their saccharine smiles
They with their pleading and their excessive acts of righteousness
Their endless giving and their pious prayers.
And the silent pride and knowledge that they are always right.
Hurts so many people.
And it hurts me.


Stop asking me with your eyes, child, I wish to say.
Stop asking me with your eyes.
Use your words-they have some form
Your actions-they have some meaning.
But when you just look with your innocent, beautiful little eyes
I know that you have mastered an art that I cannot achieve
The way you look like that.
Sheer beauty
Sheer purity.


Then I look at myself and see the degenerate that I have become and I shrink.
I cry and am damaged for this
When I get up to keep myself going
I have to put on this air of indifference.
I have to make up crass excuses.


And I find myself loathing myself by all standards, and any.


I have been given both confidence and purpose,
Yet I would be labeled arrogant.
I have been given an even-temper, a new thing as of late,
Yet I have been labeled by your questioning eyes as being coldly indifferent.
I have decided that it doesn't matter what they think.
And you have decided that I am judgemental and irrational
For rejecting what could be a reforging of a lost friendship.
You have decided that I am unforgiving and ultimately wrong.


But I am not alone.