Obscure Sorrows
In the
style of John Koenig’s “Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”
Seeker-Stress
see-cur-stress:
The pain of misplacement
When a possession goes missing, it
leaves behind a void more vivid than the thing itself. The hole glows with
bright darkness, in photographic-negative colors. Only the normal light of the
lost thing, held in hand, can quench that burning shadow.
So you run around, in frantic search
of your lost possession. You look behind things, and under them. You ransack
your pockets and your room and your mind. You review in intricate detail the
day’s travels; you picture what you lost, and you wonder how to do without it,
if you must.
And when you do find the thing, it was
in the most obvious place, but only in retrospect. With its return, relief
flushes through you, and your life makes sense again.
But not entirely. Now you hold your
possession in your hand and you see it with your eyes, yet it still shines with
the black light of absence. You tell yourself that it’s yours again; but it
reminds you that it was never yours, nor is anything else.
Everything
that you own is on loan.
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