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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Testament” cc&d (v256) (the July/August 2015 issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the book from Smoke the cc&d July - Dec. 2015 collection book		get the 318 page July - Dec. 2015 cc&d magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Reclusive

Brian Looney

    As if I was engaged in a cell phone conversation, discussing that which concerns us, only to find I never placed the call, and the screen displays some latent, static wallpaper which mocks the connection we never made, that best loved voice I never heard. Perhaps, even, we speak in different dialects, the varying inflections causing change in connotation.

    Picture yourself walking, side by side with your favorite person, down some abandoned street at the most private time of day. You are encapsulated by your conversation, so that it excludes all else, even the physical form of the person you are with. Until, passing through the lamp-strewn shadow of a nearby building, that person vanishes entirely, and you emerge into the waning light alone. You realize you have been alone this entire time.

    Like we’re in a room, you and I, conversing with each other on the same subject, only to find ourselves diverging. I funnel your words through my egocentric channels, molding them in my image, and erroneously, inaccurately responding. And you do the same. Like a pair of tramcars coasting along separate tracks, which head the same direction several miles from the station, but which suddenly veer apart without a warning. We continue several meters before we find we are unaccompanied.

    I think, after all the self-analyses, the poetic deconstruction of my ego, and all its flaws and fears, the phrase, “Inside the shell, within the casement, around the corner and at the core,” best represents this out of touch existence. I wrote it in such a state, when I first discovered my reclusion, alone but for the barren ocean splayed out like an endless carpet, alone but for the ridges in the shell, alone but for the vacant echo of my thoughts against the grain.

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