The Visitor

Moon Over Raintown / Collage on paper / 2017 / Russell C. Smith

In front of my half-closed eyelids, a 4:30 a.m. visitor stands by the moonlit window – a being who is half-ghost and half-light. He’s traveled through timespace, and across the galaxy’s cut cord. Intuitively I knew cast-iron molds would be made of this being. Every line etched around mouth and eye-socket. Every hair follicle, blemish, and cell. The only language he understands is repeating sound patterns stretching from one end of the universe to the other. A peculiar knowingness prevails, coupled with a curiosity as to why and when this being from my lineage came from. Is he a distant ghostly far-flung backwards traveler from past centuries reaching invisible fingers across time to congratulate me on breaking the cycle of blind belief responsible for stunting so many lives that could’ve gone so much further – if only, if only, if only? Or is he annoyed in a cosmic afterlife type of way to be awakened – wondering how in the expanding universe one dislocated in time being could break the rusted iron link of pain and ignorance – upending, enfolding, engulfing – ultimately disintegrating tragic stories and lies and patterns – the whole lineage had been repeating to themselves, in the cosmic neighborhood where nowhere people resided. Shaking his head at the realignment taking place within the spirits of all those who came before me. Letting go of long held Civil Wars of the heart. Never forgetting, and always remembering one was on the losing side of love and tenderness. Faulty choices made by closed-off beings who’d dreamed of overtaking their own lingering doubts, aiming only to somehow create a more perfect union. Carrying shot-up fabled relationships to fields of pain, destruction, torture. Tossing torsos and arms down into lush valleys and throwing oneself onto the muddy embankment, over and over. A timeless story unspools in a backwards place and time. The Visitor speaks in a scratchy voice, like words etched on a long-ago phonograph record trumpeting from a Victrola, playing in a parlor with wallpapered walls. He says, “Gone is the past. The future is under construction. The night evaporates and daybreak comes.”