C:\>The Liminal People

Who do you see in the unseen spaces?
In the cracks between, in the nameless faces?
Who lives here in the boundless valence,
their unattended deaths foretold by their forgotten nascence?

They are the liminal beings, phantoms formed of flesh.
Stray strands freed from the weave of life's implicit mesh.
They drift though life untethered, their voices rarely known,
with hidden holes in brittle souls the light has never shown.

They live in silhouette, their presence a confession
when you pass them on the street, yet they leave you no impression.
The mind cannot remember that which it has never seen,
for perhaps it cannot navigate the spaces in between.

You see a woman framed by the corners of the room,
and imagine her the perfect bride meant for the perfect groom.
You imagine that you know her, what she ought and oughtn't be,
as depth-less as a portrait of a captain home from sea.

The oil pigments dripping 'round the contours of her eyes
conceal in bold strokes the creeping lines that made her wise.
She lost herself once, found kneeled amongst the wreck.
Yet she made it home, a guiding compass now around her neck.

You do not know her, but we know you.
You who cajole, and you who pursue.
She's learned the price she pays, how to dodge what you have planned,
dancing through your fingers like the memory of sand.

The liberation soothes us, but peace also has its price.
When the fires have all been smothered, the heart will turn to ice.
A single thought echoes when we think ourselves free...
We think, therefore we are, but who are we?

In the midnight air, when the sunlight sleeps,
who are the demons to whom we weep
of shattered pasts and shuttered futures,
that we soothe with lies and liquored sutures?

But we like the spaces in between.
They feel like home, and we keep them clean.
This is where we make our beds, beneath the silent steeples.
This is where they lay their heads, the liminal people.