when all the lights go out.

sometimes i imagine a different picture. a dark room, devoid of everything unessential. there is a small bed, a small wardrobe. no bedtable, just an old and dusty chair where some clothes are hanging along with two half-empty packs of cigarrettes and a dirty ashtray. a small window in one of the walls capturing little light. a man sitting on the bed, alone. surrounded by pictures and wrinkled pages. in the pictures, smiling faces can be seen, revealing promises never fulfilled, a life that years before shown so much potential. all wasted. the wrinkled pages are written with tales never told, drafts of ideas that were never completed. he doesn't know where are those faces in the pictures. hasn't seen any of them in years. hasn't called them. hasn't heard about any of them, their voices lost in the void that lies beyond the door of his small room. he doesn't know where have those ideas gone. he remembers a time when they flown into him naturally, but the flow was interrupted many years ago. now he can't remember when it happened anymore. not that it matters. it was long ago. in the meanwhile, the wrinkles of his drafts are the wrinkles of his face. time heals everything, they say, but it never forgives.

what changed is unknown. at some point of his life, however, something happened that brought him to a halt. some choice, perhaps. some hesitation. some wrong. he does now know, but he ended up alone in a dark, dirty room, surrounded by his own ghosts. the only company he has left until the day when all the lights go out.