HORROR VACUI

Eric Prendergast

It's curious the way emptiness can

harden, acquiring the form and function

of a shapely hole that follows you, dutiful,

As  though the flare of longing had left

an after burn at the edge of the retina,

just outside the range of focus.

Yet if you glance aside, it leads your gaze.

I'm curious, so I trail my fingertips

over the texture of a ripened

nothing. The sensation is lukewarm,

with none of the heat that travels skin to skin,

or the cool that fills a pause

between two goodbyes.

If you're curious, there's nothing to fear

from monsters that prowl the dark,

opal black horizons that suck up light,

or any other such low pressure terror.

Nothing is mere potential.

It's only that, sometimes, absence

can take on so much presence.

Copyright 2005 © Eric Prendergast   All rights reserved.