Taryn Allan

The Atmospheric Perspective

There’s this gig venue I frequent
Along from the central station
A sweat-box of a place, tiny
More like a changing room than a stage
Where a photographic tribute to a friend of mine
Adorns the wall behind the bar she used to work
A scrapbook montage where her face used to be
A dozen fractured facets of herself
Smiling her far-away smile

In the months and years since her suicide
The venue seems to have expanded
The stage stretching away like an illusion
Fading from sight
Becoming indistinct
My reflection as I wait for my overpriced drink 
Served by a faceless new bartender
A bleary shadow in the bar’s vanishing mirror 

The gigs go on
Bands come and go like the seasons
Some more perennial than others
I no longer recognise most of the people in attendance
And no-one seems to have noticed my friend’s tribute hanging askew

When the latest gig is over 
I try not to think about how much time will pass before the next one 
Or how, like her pictures, this one will have taken its place as memory
A toe tag, timestamped and wrapped around something dead and gone
A fixed point of light diminished by darkness

I leave the venue as I arrived, alone
Into a night whose sky seems grey and artificial
As the sound of the encore becomes an indistinguishable part
Of the cacophonous ringing in my ears
The downer rush of the post-gig comedown
Like falling off the edge of a universe expanding

My friend’s suicide was an act of absolute passion 
We were never all that close 
But things have gotten worse since she left
Grown thin and distant 
A big-bang from which everything since
Has been but an ever deadening echo

They say there are more cells in our bodies
Than there are stars in the night sky
If that’s true then I can only feel her absence
As larger than the entire universe