my paper castle

My Paper Castle 1

I knelt in feigned reverence.  I looked around to see vibrancy and colorfulness.  I should be complacent, like the rest of them; the faceless; glazed eyes fixated on a hollow droning cutout upon a rostrum.  He was a crooked hunched figure, deceptively persuasive with elevation.  As I stared, I became dizzy with vertigo and loathing.  I could not eradicate their humble, pocked faces, their innocent stares.  I could not forget their frenzied, innocuous sincerity; their existence.  They were a theatre full of faces, slumped with fatigue, yet struggling in anticipation, as I stood upon the podium, speechless.  That crooked man had not prepared me for this.  His conniving words merely appeased and deluded me.  I sought and grasped, but slipped off the shoddy pedestal he and others created.  The otherworldly benevolence he spoke so fondly of dissipated with the placating smoke that had covered my eyes. That void cannot be filled with words, but action and consistency.  2

It had only been one week since I had went into Boston to aid suffering people, wallowing in the mire of penury, yet its influence was still as pervasive and influential as ever.3

A light flashed through the stained glass, cascading off the gilded cup the serpentine man had risen.  Once, I might have called that a divine sign.  Now, a miracle was a selection that elucidated how many were left out.  I began to question the pedigree of my religious education, only to find that it was superficial and merely garnished with enough to allay any uncomforting thought.  I questioned the very wooden pew I sat upon; the simplicity belying farce.  The whole surreal scene was drenched in fraudulence.  My impervious paper castle was falling; fluttering in the wind, and in its place I was left, huddled and shivering, susceptible to anything.  Raising my gelid head in subtle and momentous defiance, I would not have it any other way. 4