August 2, 2017

SECRETS, LIES, AND GOSSIP


SECRETS, LIES, AND GOSSIP
[based on the painting “Man in the Wall” by Matteo Pugliese]

Stare all day until the orange ball drops behind the horizon. Then stare through the darkness, the light of the moon over your shoulder, but you will not detect eyewitness proof that the walls have ears. Painted white or ornately dotted with fleurs-de-lis or papered with Parisian scenes of rain spearing the parasols of stately madams scurrying to reach the comfort of home.

You will not see those ears hiding in the wall space, in the fiberglass insulation, beyond the human eye.

Some insist to believe in listening walls is harebrained and certifiably inane. Others ask, “What are the walls recording in their plasterboard heads? The hushed words we say in bed at night? The lies? The vicious gossip to murder a reputation in effigy? Secrets we may voice aloud to ourselves on the brink of sleep or in the chasms of dreams?”

Are these walled-in prisoners with their sacks filled with all they have heard, bursting to escape from claustrophobia’s mighty grip?”

Siamese kitten
sniffs for sounds at bedroom walls--
all those stolen words!


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