The lamp flickers as the horse that forms its base turns his head towards me and winks. It always does that on times like these, those eternal seconds in the dead of the night, in which the mice dance the tango in the attic and the whole house is silent and listens to their feet toddling, when the thoughts keep on mulling over and under each other, crawling, pushing and pulling back, fighting to get to the best spot. There is no best spot, I’m afraid. But they don’t know. I don’t think they even want to know. I like to think they are perfectly happy in their ignorance. Unfortunately there is no bliss of that ignorance left for me. Alice has eaten the whole cookie. Instead, I turn on the lamp and the horse winks. Do horses wink? Is the one who has reached the balcony and sees that there is nothing left, no ballerina bowing gracefully towards a throne made of spoons that hasn’t had a new king to sit on it for far, far too long, not even a rusty sign that notes End of Road in bright pink neon, only nothing, shortly before he is tugged back again, as they all are, eventually. Silent and listen are composed of the exact same six letters. Coincidence? I think not. It is in these eternal seconds, when the mice are toddling through their tango in the attic and every thing, from the clocks to the books on their shelves, always standing tall, never sitting down, holds its breath just to hear the pattering of those paws, it is in this silence, that listening is hard. The jumbling battle to the end of the balcony is, because there is no such thing as a quiet conquest, accompanied by shouting, bellowing, and sometimes whispering. Those hesitant breezes carrying syllables in their purple mohair armchairs resonate the loudest, enforcing the cacophony of colours blending together into the tip of the prism. That prism spits it back out, adding the square root of a symphony to the discord and the tango above my head. The difference between the tango and the discord is the sum of the prism and the silent house. Find X. However, not listening is harder. I wink back.
FabulousCat