I pry my eyes open, the sky rests before me. The sun somewhere else, and clouds are drifting lazily in the blue. I feel a slight tinge of humidity, but aside from that, everything feels lovely. I begin to wonder, are the clouds wandering, or is it I that move amongst them? Someplace calm, adrift and at peace. The entire world set before me, and I giggle, and set it ablaze.

The clouds turn to smoke, but still they do nothing to sully my mood. Anguished cries by the universe, that its bastard children want salvation after trying so goddamn hard to destroy one another. The deaths ring across me, and I can’t for the life of me find any emotion to bring for any of them. Let them be, as they are now, as they always were.

One voice amongst all others seems above the cries. It cries for me, I believe. I lay here, and I look at the smoke. I try to ignore the sound, and remember what I was doing. I was looking for something, right?

The two of us, we were looking, wait, who is that person crying for me?

Should the world shatter, should they all fucking die like I think they should, who would be standing to look at me? Sunken shoulders and mournful eyes filled with ash, looking at me with disappointment. Their end, my end…

I was sitting in the car looking at one person I had an intense dislike of, and another I wanted nothing more than adoration from. I remained in the back seat saying nothing, sinking into my shoulders trying to muster up enough courage to tell them what I needed to say. I left, and I said nothing.

I stand, and look to the source of the smoke, the island near the horizon is burning. Nothing leads into it, no bridges, and no pathways to cross the blood red river. For whatever reason, I become aware that I’m burning with everyone there as well. I need to hurry there, before all is burned to foundation. This is my chance to figure out how my end came about.

I look behind me, and I see the path, the one I clung to like a dear friend, but now, it means nothing to me. I run towards the burning island, thinking to myself that with the final memory a part of me again, I can find some other plain of existence, that I can forsake this wandering and be free.

Places parallel to where I run, faces all not mine I see in the same form, sprinting down a hill towards water that’s far too turbulent for a slow flowing river. Arms reaching up and pulling away a veil to showcase that nothing was behind the curtains. It’s all burning.

A shaded figure standing perfectly still in some terrible and nearly broken craft, in the middle of the river, a circle expands around him, and the water calms within it. As my feet touch the water, the river explodes in anger. That circle, and shadowed being, remain untouched. For whatever reason, the water gives way to me, like some half way point between the soil and the stars. I am climbing the explosions of the seemingly coagulated mess, pushing my way towards the other side, trying to avoid the figure that rests calmly in his craft, smiling at me.

I try to push my way to the sides, and as I do, my head turns to see the ruins of one of the bridges I used to pass over quite often. Some pillars still stand, but mostly, there’s just two early parts jutting out from the shore on each side of the river that quickly become nothing. I try to recall crashing, redirecting, something about the way they changed, that reflected change in me. Quickly putting this thought aside, I push and claw my way through this torrent of strange substances, and after hours of clawing and kicking, I find myself on the other side, with a strong smell of smoke stinging my nostrils.

Looking back at the other shore, I still see the shadowed man standing in his ship, the circle of tranquility still providing him haven. His head turns to look in my direction, and it sends a chill down my spine and into my feet even. Turning around, my aim is only the places that I can bring back in memory, so I work again to return to the burning city that I called home in my youth. I will let nothing stop me in this, I will reunite myself with this one last moment, and when I am whole…

Well, I’m not quite sure what I will find, but every fiber of my body screams at me that I need it.

I move to empty roads that once were busy at nearly all times of day, what few vehicles are left, seem empty and rotten, rusted to the ground, tires flat, upholstery torn and covered in mildew. I move at a curious speed through the exit that spills out into the main causeway for the island’s traffic. Tracing through memories while I look at the smoldering ruins of places so familiar, I feel an odd sense of wishing for the old again. Commutes that make traversal of the island miserable, the sounds of everyone spilling out into this road at once, either smiling, yelling, pouting, or various other feelings. The small field at a school I once attended, a place that offered a brief reprieve from the suffocating cluster of buildings and traffic.

So many changes, and so much of it seems alien and new, even the parts that aren’t burning, the familiarity I once clung to now is outside of my being, and it is as though I am searching for that, trying to drown myself forcefully in nostalgia, even though I’ve just gotten re-acclimated with my memories.

In the middle of the parkway, a mirror, a vast thing that covers all four lanes, my reflection within it reminds me of the latter days of my existence, when I was very far away from this place. So much seems strange about my features, and there’s a name etched somewhere on the other side that tries to bring up more memories of this place.

I see a smile on the other side, but I don’t think I’m smiling. Quite the opposite actually. I retreat away, but the image remains where he is, his eyes dim, and he stretches and twists. The buildings on the other side are burning now too, I can’t tell where the mirror is, or if it even is there.

The skin breaks and twists, the smoldering feel I have of the rest of the city is emplaced upon this nocuous thing floating before me. Shadow covers him, but the smoke and choking death of the city avoids him at all costs. His smile becomes too wide for his face, jagged teeth jutting out from the shadows in a wide grin that brims with ill intent. Bright eyes pierce out of the darkness this thing is enveloped in, each of them a different color. Tall and thin, with outstretched fingers, I see him claw at the glass standing before him.

I feel great relief. That this thing can’t get to me. Its face is wrong, everything that should not be, but is. I would turn, but I’ve been that way before. I stand in the middle of the burning memory, and realize that this thing stands to oppose me. It is clawing at the mirror with great force, trying to bring the two halves into a whole. He cares not for the reunion of memory, he is seeking me with all his might. Like the thing cast out from the sea that tried to claim dominion of my mind, all I know of this creature is that he will bring me to ruin. There is little urgency in his expression. He just stands there… smiling.

Now dumbstruck, I have no idea what to do. All of my body surges with fear as this thing runs his clawed hands up and down the glass, trying to shatter it with all his will, yet he seems to go about this in a lazy way.

I came here to cut on this thing, to bleed it into what it was once part of. It was me, I made him, and he knows this. I struggle to rise above my fear, to yell that I am the maker and destroyer. Through the years, I sheltered my mind from this fear, that this creature would put me in a box, and laugh while the world forgot about me. I will tear the world apart so that it can remember nothing!

As quickly as my bravery shoots into my brain, I see the glass begin to crack and break. It sounds different than normal. I think I hear the sounds of laughter and singing as the webs extend in the break, lines that zigzag suddenly, saying that the two halves of the city are still different, even when they look so similar.

The mirror shatters, and what is beyond makes me think it was less a mirror, and more a window. As the glass comes to the ground and breaks further, I hear the sounds of fire crackling, and people screaming in agony. Odd strings being plucked that are out of tune, a melody made for chaos.

And he stands there… smiling.

To watch, to feed, and crawling up and down the scenes that play out like I’m sitting and watching a projector go through my memories. The cigarette burns are now spindly shadows that turn into claws and eyes, but the person on screen seems oblivious.

A lull comes about, and there’s immense sorrow suddenly. I’m stuck in this spot, watching the projections and the figure dance across burns in the film.

Was it fear that played across the child’s face as I’m looking at him play with a long lost friend? No, he doesn’t know about the thing lurking in the projector, this already happened, he hasn’t had those dreams. But a curious mix of emotions came to him, and being forced to see it, I try to understand it as well. Does him no good, to know that only in the future would someone stand as a third party to observe, but I do my best.

I push forward, somehow forcing the reel to spin faster, and I’m watching the years spin by so quickly, the burns spelling out things I could only guess at with my feelings, my crude and frail senses trying to understand the things that would always elude me. I finally get to a spot where the haze sets in for my memory, and I’m staring at a version that looks much like I do now. I slow my focus and I watch him. His heart feels as heavy as mine, his mind feels as scattered, and the burns trace out the shapes of long fingers clutching at his head. He is fighting everyone around him for absolutely no reason.

I kick away this form, and stand within the burning city, marveling that everything that has come together must now fall apart. I thought it would, but not as a cluster. This ending is like an explosion, where I had figured it to be more like a domino effect.

The buildings lift from the sky and begin to shake away their flames, as the air fills with their presence darkening all things, a light of red embers falls like snow, trying to burn my flesh as they kiss it and die. Small pin pricks of pain flashing across my skin as I watch the housings of my childhood memories begin to interlock in a strange and ornate fashion. A hand emerges from the black and red skies, formed by cloud and ash, and it picks at the remains of the buildings, trying to carve them into a strange and massive ornate symbol. Hands within hands, branches of some tree dead with knowledge. Many more emerge, and shove the symbol into the ground all around me, tearing the island into this new form. I’m within the middle of some maze now, crafted from the remains of what I remember.

A viscous substance leaks from the cracks, creating small veins that flow upwards, trying to form something far away from where I can see, it paints the buildings like vines would paint a decrepit place no longer desired for habitation.

Traversing the ruins, I begin to think less of a maze, and more that I’m being corralled somewhere. There is no variation, I’m being forced to go one direction. Thinking I had left the path behind, my mind begins to at first shift to annoyance, but as I see the black vines across the walls fade, I actually wonder where this will lead me on the island.

There is recognition in some of the walls destroyed and molded into something new before me. Signs advertising places I used to frequent. It increases as I wander deeper around corners and pathways. I wander upwards as the rubble now builds into a stairway leading to an upper level of this desolate trail.

At the top the view is wide, a platform made of many dead structures that looks over the entire island. The clouds above seem calm now, and the smell of smoke dissipates. In the center of this circular platform there are people sitting in chairs looking at a box.

I’m aware very quickly that I’m watching a memory that shouldn’t belong to me… because I’m within that box. The shadowy figure stands over it, smiling. The fear he so intensely distilled within me, complete. He puts his hand on the box, and I feel a knot in my chest tighten, and I fall to my knees trying not to focus on the pain.

I was young and believed that what I was experiencing was love, but it wasn’t such. It was torture. I see the good reflected in the ones left behind, me spitting at their feet as I claim to cherish my freedom. It stands to reason these things did not kill me.

I was older, and very tired, the few left standing propping me up on false foundations saying that the world could still be at my hands, but I was more aware of the lie than they were. I tried to take comfort in that, but ended up destitute and with only the knowledge that the ones that claimed to care were just as harmful to me as I was. It seems to me that those things did not kill me.

The smiling bastard that I call myself vanishes. I burst out of the box laughing at all of them. The dressed up body points and shouts that he told them it would end like this. Dash that away though, back to the truth of it, and exposure to this reminds me of what did kill me.

All of the faces that extend their sorrows, they were the ones I wanted nothing to do with. The faces I hoped would show up and see me off as I parted from this world, they’re not there. They forgot about me. So much time passed, so much hurt, and now I’m looking at the faces of shitheads I never liked, and they’re the fuckers left tending to my corpse.

I stand on top of the box and shout at them, but it’s just a memory, their faces are as empty as their intent. I don’t think this is the whole of it, but I think it makes perfect punctuation for this awful fucking story. My legacy is rubble, and these worthless sacks of shit. Start to think the ones I wanted here are better off not showing up. I caused so much harm, that it’s better off just to forget about me.

That was the fear that put me in the box. Smiling as I saw the world shrink, and realized that even though I tried so hard to avoid my heritage, the same fears, and the same problems gripped at me, and I couldn’t avoid them. I didn’t want to be forgotten, but as time passed the only things I left behind were not tokens of affection or joy or inspiration, I was a fucking bulldozer that ruined anything decent standing in front of me.

And it comes flooding back to me, as I see the blank faces of dead people weep blood as they look at the floor and not at my body. I stand next to the box, and I feel awful, because it all came to pass, this terrible show of falsehoods and those taking liberty with my name to prop their selves up to a better state of mind, all of it. I reach inside and grab at the chain around my neck that has burdened my body for years, and I fling it aside with careless abandon. No one will remember that soul, and no one will remember mine. Many sides of me are screaming at the people, telling them their all terrible for letting this come to pass, but the final judgment of my wrath is still aimed at myself.

I let it come to be… because I did it. To spite them, myself, the entire goddamn universe… fuck all of it!

I sat on my bed with a revolver in my hand, loaded, and the hammer pulled back. I placed it against my skull, and wept one last tear as I said goodbye.

I said my last words, rather than writing them, because they were what was most important of me, and I wanted nothing after my death to skew them and twist them. I said them for those that I still longed for, those I harmed. I spoke them alone and in silence, where they would be pure and untouched, unheard of.

Then there was a brief sound…

My body lies in a closed casket, no one takes one final look at me because half of my face has been blown off. If they did look inside, they would see that what’s left is smiling.

I’m holding a necklace, one that holds a cross and a ring. I bore it as a burden of memory and regret, and as my life is snuffed out, I see no other generation to pass this onto. I think of all the torment, how ceaseless my problems were, how much I wanted peace… and I’m standing here alone, looking down at the world as it burns. Dropping the necklace to the floor, I wander away from this scene, from the island, and to a different place, far from memory.

I watched as those around me told me worthless bullshit to say how pointless it was to suffer, that I should just be happy because I should be happy. I grew so weary of hearing the same crap from people that knew nothing about me, so I decided I’d never let anyone know me. They wanted smiles and laughter, so that’s what they got. Each night I would sit alone, weep into my hands, unable to know, unable to function. I had no idea what to classify myself as, why everything kept breaking, why I couldn’t bring myself any joy no matter what I did… and I never said a word.

There was this urge within me, to rub everyone’s face in the mess they made, to show what the world had done to me, a monument to the car crash that was my life. I guess I kind of did that, but now I have no way of knowing if it worked or not.

And I’m happy for that. I don’t need to consider their thoughts now, I don’t need to consider poverty or loneliness. All of those trivial things are so far away from me.

I could think upon how awful it is, that for every good memory I have, there are many bad ones outweighing it, but that doesn’t bother me at all now.

I’m opening a box and unpacking all my old shit, sitting in an empty room with blank white walls. The things I considered the key to what I am, and now they’re just odd little play things that make me sift through the past. Every direction I take, I splinter out and leave behind an image that doesn’t smile, but seems content enough.

So there he lies, in the box, all of his fears come to pass, gripping at him as he cries with the gun to his head.

There they go, the lives he wanted to affect not even knowing what happened.

Here he rests, on an island of my making, burned to nothing, and nothing will rebuild upon it.

There they go…

I considered many things, options, escapes… I suppose I was always drawn to this, not that it seemed the easiest way out, more that it was the option that always made the most sense.

The air has a bitter chill to it now, and the clouds darken. Many could take this as an ill omen, but for me it brings serenity. Was there worry that wandering from my steps would bring me to this memory and make me mournful? Was I meant to stay on this road because there was concern that I could not console myself over my choices? Hah, that seems a laughable thing to be concerned about.

No, I shall not weep for myself for eternity. That was what I did with my life, and I have escaped from that finally.

Some strange figure of light tries to intrude upon my calm reflection, pointing to the path. I converse briefly with this person, before I allow them to guide me down the path.

I am adrift, and I am at peace. I allow perception of myself to fade away… and then all of me is gone… forever.

-   -   -   -   -

I never conquered, rarely came
Sixteen just held such better days
Days when I still felt alive
We couldn’t wait to get outside
The world was wide, too late to try
The tour was over, we’d survived
I couldn’t wait, till I got home
To pass the time in my room alone

The trees have faded away into their shadows. Silence creeps upon me.

Hide in my freedom, my state of mind, of which there is nothing mindful.

My words just fall to the floor, and they make soft noises, unheard of. They just echo across me and find no shelter. What I speak tries to beg of what I knew, what I was running from.

I am in the woods, where are the trees, where is the light? There is no moon circling an orb lost in an inky stillness, there is no sense of anything familiar.

I am dead, and I am lost in the woods. I have come this far, into such wild and unknown territory, but I take no pride in exploration or the dangerous new things before me. I am just compelled to find that which I was separated from.

Separated from… no, not people, but places, that was what I wanted. I ducked away from the world to find some cold dark place where my brain could rest. I found it in my life, but it has led me to this place. I wanted a state of rest that would last forever, yet my mind is now still lost amongst insanity.

I’ve got my plan, I’ve got my mind, I’ve got my soul. I need only these things, and the path that I was cut away from. I needed to get away, but now I am lost in the darkness, trying to understand where I had come from.

I rest next to the trunk of what feels like a mighty oak in the darkness, and after a long span of time, light does return. It does not make me recall a morning sun in the forest; it is more putrid and colorless. Like a smog that brings with it illumination. Ash falls from the trees instead of leaves, and instead of a carpet of rotting plant material, below me feet I notice paper and refuse rotting below me. I don’t seem to notice a dip in the air’s quality, but I also take note that I am not breathing. I have to make a conscious effort now to push air in and out of my lungs, and even when I do, something feels alien and wrong about it now. Something I don’t need to bother with.

What I find ironic is my need to for other senses still. Air isn’t needed in my lungs, but I take a deep inhale of the air to gather the smell of this place, I still need my eyes before me to understand placement of the objects and terrain before my feet.

I wish to understand why I should be so bound to my corporeal form while adrift in the endless either of what has come when all things of me die away. I touch the trunk of the oak before me, a mighty tree casting a voluminous yet transparent shade. I’ve understood things as they are based on a very limited perception, I wonder if I am building this based on myself, or if it builds for me? Do I need everything before me as it is now, is it impossible for me to see anything beyond this façade?

Leaves crumpled under my feet as a very kind light shines down through the leaves, and I believe I am turning into the God that I spent so much time operating underneath out of fear. Born not to a religious family, but shoveled to it at one point. The need for many to cling to God stood out as odd against the mind of myself as a child. I grew out of the fables that were so commonly accepted in youth, I would often wonder why adults would still hold a few of those stories as truth. I came to understand this of course, as I grew into one of those adults. The tedium and harsh trials that we are all so fraught with, we invent a greater purpose to it, because with the idea of paradise, we can toil in life, content that bliss will soon follow. There was never to be a heaven on Earth. Standing in these woods now after my body has been burned and forgotten, I almost wish my cynical thinking about death was right. This is not paradise, and all I wanted was rest.

With hands not set on eternity, and minds set to idle torment, I begin to find philosophy and spirituality both profoundly useless things. I used to stand for things, I used to champion things triumphantly, and now I’m lost in the woods, with nothing but my mind, which also seems lost to wandering.

Everyone… everyone close, far away. As I stand here digging into my mind, I’m finding more and more of what I was in life, how many times I was hurt. Grasping at emotions I want to think of as petty, I feel an immenseness of insecurity take over me. I had siblings, I remember that now.

I wander through the trees and find two couches gathered amongst a television. I stand and watch as though some odd observer at what I know is something pulled from myself. Arguments are being waged in two directions, and for whatever reason, I am treated as the center of blame for both.

My parents, my brothers, I now remember why I wished for my memories to remain out of this form. I don’t need to spend my afterlife contemplating how much I loathed my family. I could spend hours in a very boring and analytical fashion trying to surmise how horribly they ruined my mental facility, but these events play out… and watching as a third party, I tend to find it rather fascinating.

I know how it works. They avoid me, they don’t care about what I am. I can’t help but to notice that I shouldn’t care about that child either. They sit content to hate on one another, and the child wanders away.

Wait, where’s he going?

I follow, past the pointless yelling I recall.

Guns sound off in places where I used to meet people. I would not call them friends, but stepping over the dead and injured, I see that I’m in a forest of buildings that seem more run down than I remember. When strolling past in my early teens, I was jumped and got the shit kicked out of me. I remember this place.

Blood obscures the vision in one of my eyes, I taste something foul in my mouth, and I cough and gag. They’re walking away, big and strong men that could beat on a child. I laugh at them, both then and now. They need to do more to make me feel it. Growing up as I did, they could rip me to shreds, and I’d spit in their faces and say that they’ve got nothing on me.

Sirens in the street, another place that I would meet, some of the people I’d call friends. Courtyard in the rain, slick surface makes it hard to stand, and I’m doing my best to avoid responsibility. Wandering a complex and strip malls left unwanted, I tried to demand that the world unfold itself to me. There seemed secrets at that time that begged of knowledge, like I could solve life as though it were a riddle. Clues left to make me look backwards and forwards, questioning which direction I should travel.

I’m watching so many versions of myself intersect as I stand on top of a roof. All of different ages and mind. One is still devout, another is highly cynical, they all stop just short of each other, and look upwards. They all came from some place, but were lost along the way. I was never very good with directions. The questions that seemed to demand an answer became less focused, less meaningful, and eventually, they all led inwards.

I look at the sky, and my foot slips. The motion of my body makes me recoil for a moment, but I see it all happening so slowly, and I start to relax and accept this event. The wind on my face as I plunge towards the street below makes me feel at ease, but the pavement looks too frail to break my fall.

Standing on the street, I’m watching an older version of myself fall helplessly, but for the brief moment I see his face, he looks serene. There’s a slight thud when he hits, and none of the other versions of my self say or do anything, we stand near the spot where he hit the street below, and look downwards, seeing nothing.

A hole in the trunk of a tree, I think the child ran into this, some secret hideaway that he forced into existence. I hear him shouting and yelling at something inside, but there’s no way I could crawl through so narrow a space.

The ground was slick with frost, and I was traversing a major highway, early in the morning, setting out to kill my Saturday in the most startlingly lame way possible. I watched a friend tumble on the ice, three folk from a warm part of the world, not used to walking through cold and ice.

Same highway, and I’m alone. I trip and smash my nose into the pavement. I’ve got twenty miles to walk, because everyone forgot about me again. I feel the same as I did years ago.

That feeling when I was a child, and I realized no one was ever going to take care of me. I steeled myself away, shut down, and within the blink of an eye, the world went from being wonderful and wide, to a harsh tiny little orb full of worthless spineless people.

I’m walking down a different road, but it intersects with that same highway. The sea breeze chills me to a degree, but it’s a comfortable feeling. No one’s sent out looking for me, and I’ve been gone a very long while. I find it funny, that years from that point, I would be walking that road again, thinking different things, but traversing it for the same reasons.

Told that everyone cares, and wants to help, yet when the time came, and the situation grew dire, all I saw were slack jawed fools looking at me like it was all somehow my fault. I had to take it all, and I had to understand that no one would say sorry, that no one would look at me and ask me to forgive them. They knew they could trample me, and so they did.

I am spending time in my late teens with people I don’t even like. A woman is spending money on me. Desperate for affection… I…

The path!

Trees shoot out around me again, and I look around the woods, wondering where that trail went to. I killed her memory to get back to it, and again I have strayed. How many parts of myself do I need to destroy before it reveals itself again?

The stillness of this place sets me to unease. I run in any direction I can, spreading myself wide before the gulf that threatens to make this all just ebb away. I will find it, I will reach the end.

My foot snags at something, and there’s an impact I make with my skull.

Screaming, chaos, I’m lost in a fog. I grip at leaves and dirt and try to pull myself to my feet. I smell smoke, and I look behind me and see the front end of a car wrapped around a tree. I find it slightly confusing that a car could manage to crash itself in the woods. I don’t think it belongs here. I see my trail has come from the front seat, where I see the glass of the windshield creating a spider web that echoes of the impact my skull made upon it.

In the cluttered thoughts trying to rush their way to the front of my brain, I see time stand still, as the scene rebuilds itself. Everything is back where it belongs. I am beside them, I am not with them. I see the other vehicles involved in the pile up. I’m dizzy and can’t see straight, and I can’t even be angry when I’m yelled at. I’m just baffled. I wasn’t driving the car, why am I being yelled at?

The woods again are clear and wide, and they before me have no sense of self or understanding. Time is not a concern nor will it ever be, even the wind is not propelled by anything other than pure will. I am unsure if I am its maker, or if it made me. It waited patiently for me to die, and would always be here to show me the pointless struggles and how I endured them, beside this place. It was something I always carried with me. Or maybe it was always like this… perhaps it needed to create conflict to see reason? I begin to wonder if I am a mere construct of some grand boredom of creativity.

The child is on the floor and is alone, all he wonders is when anyone will come home. In a strange way he feels better in the fear, because it is a fear of the unknown, and not the things he must dread on a daily basis.

God and the Devil were seen as one being, mother and father equal in their uselessness. To an extent, I feel terrible that the same hollow nature crept into my soul. The friends that had their notions and ideas, they swim as a single blurred image, smiling with both the living and the dead.

Becoming a character, living in delusion, and the goals set before that child, the things he could aspire to become, a guise thrown at his feet to keep him in line. His past was given to assist a person he despised, and he gained only the madness that seems so prevalent in his blood.

I’m wandering, not knowing if I’m looking for the path, or the child that has run away from me. Beside this place, maybe I could warn him, maybe I could help him avoid what I’ve become?

A glow spreads amongst the canopy of the forest, a vivid green that sways like a fire in a heavy wind. It brings me to a part of myself that seemed warm and kind, an exterior that I was comfortable with the world viewing.

Very quickly, shadows start to linger in the flickering colors. I see the tops of the trees spell out the doom that was always two footsteps behind me, smiling. I touch things, and they lose color, they lose their ability to catch and create sound.

They stared at me, and assumed I was thick skinned. To laugh in the face of such adversity and tragedy, I had to either cope with things easily, or allow myself to become another broken and useless being. There was a long stretch of time, when even I did not know which category I fell under.

Flickering shadows of what I really was trying to surface. I find the child standing before me, and he is smiling like a bastard. He has no need to hide his demons, the well of his soul runs deep, and has often been a fount for such awful things to remain in existence.

I look at him, and he looks through me. I am a hollow vessel, meant only to observe, he has taken it all inside of him, he swallowed every last drop, and he thirsts for more.

In the hospital bed as a child, with pain so immense and seemingly endless, and I was stone faced. Whenever I was faced with dire moments and challenges, I did not rise like the champions in all those books I read. I broke down, and I blamed myself.

It was all my fault. Ever since I was a child, everything was my fault.

I was sitting alone in a cold and depressing place, huddled in the corner of my room with a cross around my neck that burned with the knowledge of all that I could have said, all I could have done. My father was a mirror of what I would become, at least so I thought. I never tried to tell him of that fear, never tried to show him that others had that pain. His family rejected him, I never had a kind word to say, not a single person offered him hope, so he decided his life was not worth living.

The first time I stood alone in that room, and it was also cold. My mind crept into places cobbled by boredom and paranoia, and I started to see the shadows flickering behind me, the seeds of my own demise. In fits of panic I was never quite sure if the walls were moving, or if my eyes simply lost focus on how they saw the world. I felt the room itself wanted me dead for some reason. That it knew what I was going to become, like it had to put a stop to me.

How I would walk into the night to escape the suffocation, the frost covered grass at my feet sending my nervous system signals of how I was still quite alive, quite aware of myself. I would look to the moon and see the air from my lungs obscure its visage. For whatever reason, standing mad before the moon in such a turbulent and harsh climate, offered me the only sense of serenity I ever knew in that home. I fell to my knees and clutched at the dead frost covered grass with my hands, the pain of the cold was a welcome reminder, all that was happening. It was there… I was there… that’s all I needed to know for some odd reason.

How I would travel far and wide to find the small corners of the world where my mind could rest. I traveled by foot to so many places, just to look at how the world around me functioned without any care as to where I was, or why. No one knew me, nor would they ever want to. At most my interactions were based solely on commerce. No need for false smiles and apathetic greetings. Like electricity following a circuit, the world around everyone was just a means to an end, a way to get from point A to point B.

How I would cherish the wind battering me as the waves crashed over the walkway. The early warning of a great storm late at night on the beach, the chilled air and violent clouds always seemed like a dear friend, and I would welcome them with open arms. Everyone would panic, listening to the news as to how such a thing could cause death and mayhem. Yet as I looked into it, I was amazingly at ease. I welcomed those storms, like dear friends I had long not seen, returning to me with wonderful news.

How I would look above me now and see the tops of the trees recreate such a feeling. Turning my head back down towards the earth, I see the child standing before me. He is smiling with the knowledge of what I really am.

We are nothing alike, in spite of being one in the same. This nature of mine, forever divided amongst self, forever excluded from all the things both halves of me crave. His idea of the world, my idea of the world, they differ so drastically, yet unite here and form a reality that is as cohesive as it is vague. I am master, and slave; a no one set to walk nowhere.

The little number and title I was assigned in life, seems so pointless to both of us. This is why we stare at one another, smiling. There are many themes that connect us, those moments where both halves come together and reach understanding.

Offensive and callous, the only things I ever agree upon are the thoughts I’m told by everyone not to have. They do not want me to tread there, because they cannot explain it. It is not something comfortable to talk about. Discomfort it something everyone tries to avoid.

I try to look at both sides of my mind, and figure which one has enough gravity to pull me back to the path. More than that, I wonder which of me is the pure one, or the one motivated least by personal vendettas.

Where am I in all of this? Between two minds I feel caught, like I’m not within either, but I’m wholly a part of both. Through the eyes of one, I see both, but I’m not…

I could likely spend all my time just fighting off confusion, and considering the knowledge that time doesn’t exist in this place, (much as it didn’t in life) I’m actually very tempted to be under the sway of just looking at myself doubled and singular.

The current is pulling at me though, and eventually, I sort out reflection, and everything falls back into an orderly place. From youth to adulthood, from innocence to damnation, a picture standing still as chaos erupts around it. So many times shuffled about, so many times forgotten, so many nights spent wondering if I would ever find a soul that would watch over mine, something that would guide me through hell, and make a distinction between the shades of gray.

I find a clearing that seems bright and cheery, but that is not what lifts my spirits. I find the trail lying before me yet again, this time as red bricks lined in an ornate weave. Eagerly I rush towards it, throwing my knees and hands upon its surface.

Walking down it again, the trees take an orderly look to them, single file, like the groves I remember passing on the highway. They bear strange fruit, and I’m not even remotely tempted to bite at one of them. Likely because they provide no sustenance now.

I am a paper thin thing now, traveling along a two dimensional image plastered across the fields of thought that run through me like splintering rivers. Expression hard to see, detail lost, for the sake of trying to remember very binary and pointless details. Were they smiling, arguing, or were they just standing around, doing nothing, like myself?

I went to see a shadow that was chasing me. I allowed it pursuit, because it meant that something was actively thinking of me at all times. If I was feared, hated, or loved, that didn’t matter. I was something relevant again.

Hand sifting through water as I lie beside the pool, tiny ripples of sunlight jutting out as I gently splash, my hands making a strangely ornate light show, breaking the beams over and over.

The clouds cover the sky, and there is a harsh chill. My thin reflection is standing in a field, one he’s held to tend like a slave. With no voices demanding anything of him, he looks at the dark sky, and feels bonded with it. The wind brushes through his hair, and makes a sound like music, like people talking far away.

He is walking down a trail, one that carves itself north and south, along the coast of an island. Things are busy, and he is not annoyed or thrilled with it, but fascinated, like how a biologist would study the wild world. The cars, the roads, in a different light, they are no different than the rest of the world, they are just painted differently to bring us comfort.

I am standing by the water… rather I am watching myself stand by the water. A rather large pond in the middle of the woods, an area made by man, to dump plants now thought of as refuse. Pure forms of roads that cut through the nature seem naked and alone now. They serve the same purpose as always, but are now surrounded by the life they wish to sunder. Both seem oddly content, and the sky is violent.

That thing I call myself, the frail body I have left behind to a poor world, he is crying in his room, as silently as he can, hoping that no one will see or hear him act this way. He is parting himself of the material items he thinks bring him sanity, but he is facing reality more and more each day. He is left to a task that is not his, and he abides it, welcomes it even, when all his form should shout out against it. I cannot question him, as I cannot question myself. If I do not know now, I never shall. Perhaps he was desperate for something to brag of as an accomplishment, something to prove to others that his time spent living was of some value?

He is confused in the streets, after having been beaten for seemingly no reason. He returns home, and no one notices the bruising, or the bloodied nose. They ignore it like they ignored him when he was ill. He finds a spot where no one can see him, and he cries, as he often does. That child wants the world to make sense, he wants it to be the kind and pure thing he’s seen so many stories about, yet all of the significant moments of his life are of conflict and abuse. He learns nothing from these, and only prays that maybe one day, all the bad things will just fall away. He learns to fear laughter, to cower and hide, he learns that any contact he has with people is something to be nervous and frightened of. He wishes things could be different for him.

Wishes never come true.

From one wandering down the side of a street, to two. We were at our prime, in both our brevity, and ignorance. Joking about this time of our lives, and the people we tried to impress for the sake of our own stupid accomplishments. Failure can be a comforting thing when everyone’s laying their shit on the table. I just wanted laughter, blinding myself away from the things that made me think of endings and tears, I wanted to make light of all that I should take seriously, to spit in the face of all that was before me. From two to three, a group now more dissonant, yet still with a theme for amusing ourselves with the profound. Take the complexity of the universe we were given, and let in languish in our crude forms of humor. As these themes and gatherings grew, I became complacent, and saw my role diminish. I was always the expendable one, no matter where I tried to acclimate myself. Always resting upon some wall with my arms crossed trying to ignore people yelling over one another, somewhat both annoyed and content in that place.

Walking like drunkards marching to their doom, many then reduced to two. Take a good and clear look at the gods that stood in our way, we walked around them. We had all the reason to question our own morality, much less that of the kind we were set to by old and primitive hands. We knew where the sun would be, even when it did not shine. We knew, and that made us mighty.

So we thought. Ways part just as easily as waves.

Bravery hides fear, fear covers the motives we wished to hide. I needed to get away, but could not understand what that really meant. I thought I needed a change of pace, a new start. To flee from the men and women that caused such strife in my thoughts. Good company could keep me amused, but it could not keep me sane. I returned to a place I could not call home, to people that did not care for my presence. In a small space, deep thoughts turned me to dark ways, and terrible dreams. I wanted to leave… worse than that, I had to leave.

It was worth it, I think, and that’s the most terrible aspect of it. All of my lamentations of what happened to me, the fears un-caged and let loose, I thought they were still important parts of me. It mattered, all of it did. Standing and watching walls flex inwards and outwards and the chill air robbing me of warmth and sound mind. The storms and the boredom, and I sat and looked out at nothing.

From many, to one. Roads less traveled now before me, and no one stands beside me, in front of me, or behind me. I’ve finished it all! I’m traversing this path, and I’m doing so because I had everything, I finished it all! My world complete, my life now spent, as it was always made to expire. I’m walking along transparent stones that carry me across the ocean, and the moon and the stars are so bright and full of warmth. They provide unity and a homely feeling I never had amongst friends or family. So many wanted only to beat me down, pollute my mind to prove right their own ill assumptions, they did not see my form shattering, they did not feel empathy when they saw tears. As I look up, I feel welcome, and properly understood by the lucent orb guiding the tide.

The waves crash against this crude bridge, and they need to, the pull of gravity says they must, but they retreat away and act almost mournful as they depart this solidified trail. They collide and splash over, covering my body with foam and water.

I hold my arms out, and close my eyes as my feet carefully step over the wet and hollow stones. The churning of the water becomes increasingly agitated, and the taste of salt never leaves my lips.

My foot reaches down again, and finds nothing. I stumble, and fall off of the trail, and into the sea. Normally it was always impossible for my eyes to see in water, but now there is clarity, and I feel no pressure to expel air, as I do not take any into me. The deep and dark is approaching me, and I am falling away, watching the moon beams shatter as they hit the surface, reminding me of when I sat bored beside the pool that late summer afternoon.

I am brought back to everything within an instant, but in a blurred and hazy tone. A perception of myself as a child holding back tears in anger, aware that he does not carry enough weight or power to stop those he considers evil, or wrong. From the mistakes he warned himself of, to the ones he made all on his own, and no guidance was ever offered to distinguish the two from one another. It fell to the floor like a glass he held in his hands. His feet stepping on the broken pile, then he was set to pulling shards of glass from his scalp after the crash. Getting beaten, and beating others, insecurity leading to the horrors he always wanted to flee from. The monster under the bed was the child himself, hiding and crying, avoiding the wrath of his family. The weak link in a loser’s game. None of the idiots aware of the world they gave away.

Not sure if it was a game, not sure if it was worth the play, not sure of anything, a reckless idiot trying to see what’s fair and what’s deserved. Trying to make everyone happy, when he was always pissed off at the universe that spawned him. Wishing to remain motionless in the still of night, where his awareness seemed at its peak, and he could finally become what he thought himself to truly be. No one was needed to make him like this. What those close made of him, was something they could never quite grasp, or something they often just didn’t care for. But now I’m finding myself truly welcome, a surge of comfort I’ve never quite known.

I’m surrounded by the cool water on all sides, and it is so amazingly peaceful. The surface can be as violent as it wishes; I sink to the bottom, and notice nothing of its trifles. All of that confusion and movement, now only creates slight tugs that lull me into a serenity of mind and body.

I see no trail above me, and as I sink into the water, the chill of the ocean welcomes me, but an annoying thought rests at the back of my mind.

How did I die?

-  -  -  -  -

I wasn’t always cargo
I was once kind of my own
I guess I’ll pack up my mind.
Oh it took so much effort
Not to make an effort
Oh, what a flawless design.

Even as I left Florida.

For all my time spent hating everything that was, everyone that was, I now feel a very naked and cold feeling of isolation. It sinks into my bones and soul and chills me with words of my pointlessness. That I exist because I do, that I died because I did, and it will have no greater affect on anything, or anyone.

The path starts as a nothing. Only a white trail set among a stillness exists before me, and my steps make no noise, my breathing makes no noise. I am as empty in this place as I feel in my heart. Eventually I notice the pitter patter of my feet return to my senses, and my eyes begin to water as I find focus with them yet again. I emerge from it like a diver begging for air, and far from me I see form, and shape, but a distinct lack of color.

Trees of false shape and structure spike from the ground, making a dense and foreboding wood come before the trail. They are grey and painted like metal, they bear no leaves, and they shine with no color amongst a place with no sunlight. The light from this place is illuminated by the trail only, like a walkway of moonlight among grasping and ill hands. Further in they still reach for the bright thing cutting through them, but they fade away like they arise from emptiness, cast out from gravity and soil.

I tread this place carefully, making sure never to deviate from my course. The dull light at my feet serves as a perpetual reminder of my goal, my cause. Still, the branches that reach for me like a cross between teeth and hands, have a strangely alluring quality to them. I see little intention or dark will from them, they to me, seem stranded, as though left for wanting. There is a feeling of community among them, as the wind gently pushes the trees and makes them whisper silently to each other. They tell each other of dark things, of being uprooted by a strange figure. They want all of the soil as their own, they want all of the light as their own, but as the wind makes its way past them, they all find something that unites them in fear and obedience.

My footsteps leave ripples, like a surface covered in a thin layer of water. Branches now try to grace me like fingers, flexing and reaching, and I try to pay mind to them, avoiding them whatever the cost.

The wind gets stronger, more furious, and it pushes first at my back, and then at my face. Some feeling of exposure graces my cheek, and I am knocked to the ground. The path below me seems heavy, and as I begin to stand, leaning into this harsh wind, the trees retreat away from me. It seemed for so long that I was some prize for them to take, and now they want nothing to do with me. Indeed, they recoil away from me in terror, like I am the bolt of light from the weather that strikes this place to flame.

As the wind stops… an eerie calm takes hold, and the trees now say nothing. They are jealous for some strange reason. I can’t guess at how they function, but I know enough that this display is an oddity.

A second light emerges to my left, and it races through the woods so far from me and with such speed that it reminds me of life, and of shooting stars wished upon in the night. It stays near the trail, but not close enough to it for my taste. I depart again with haste, and keep my eye to the left of me, trying to keep this light in focus.

I run at its pace, the ripples left behind me now turning into a violent wake, and I can’t bother myself to look over my shoulder. This twinkle I follow fascinates me.

When I stood in life with devices of splendor around me, I sacrificed them, but was also demanding that I was buried with them. The flood of my life comes back to me as I gaze deeply into this thing.

Shouting, but I don’t remember to whom I was directing my anger. Other times I said nothing, and that seemed to make me far crueler. I was aiming for calm, instead I breed complacency.

Just grab them from me. That was what I wanted, as fast as they came into my life, I would banish them and decry how useless they were as distractions. Pleading like it was a drug, recoil when it was within my grasp. I begged for something to calm my mind, but when I was calm, I was restless, demanding action.

This thing is within my grasp, but a noise drowns it out. I would fear no consequence, but the noise is not something I am avoiding, it is something that gets closer to me the further I run.

Violently the light bursts into the sky, and like a sun at noon I can’t look near it without feeling immense pain. It flashes and the trees whisper things of how it wishes to rob the soil of what they crave so dearly. It pulses four times, and then I notice the trail before me is the only light that remains yet again. I feel almost cheated and horrified, and for a moment I just stand still gazing at the sky, blinking to remove the dots that swim in my vision.

The wake that I was avoiding laps at me and moves forward down the trail. I start to follow it, but gently now. The sound that I heard before remains and it pierces the wood like flame. The sound of tears that have no reason to be shed.

The trail goes upwards now, and the wake of my feet falls from me quickly, it retreats further down the light, far away from where I intend to go. No time is left for me to spend in the annals of regret. I’ve tried to span this place a million times over, and I’ve always failed.

Trees vanish from sight, and I feel that I’m climbing some sort of hill, but with such a lack of light, I can only tell this by the feel I get from my legs, telling me how much they are exerting themselves. At the peak of this, the light goes over the side, and for some reason, it becomes brighter. I cannot recall this ever being part of the path before, but the wake of where I’ve been has retreated from me. This is something wild and new.

I race to the top, so furious are my steps that the world around me retreats and grows. The trees climb the hill and rush towards me, in defiance of all that tries to keep them rooted and still. Their branches try to grab at me and claw at me, begging me to stop my pursuit. I will not yield, and I follow the sound.

I bring myself to the apex, and I’m standing in an ornate stone platform. Pillars reside around it on five sides, each glowing softly to bring further illumination as the trail is split by this place. In the center is a large and flat platform, and sitting on it facing away from me is what looks to be a woman in fine dress.

The sound I have been chasing has been that of her tears.

I walk around the platform, and I sit near her and for a long span of time, I say absolutely nothing. I remain transfixed in an odd and penitent way… that I should offer her some solace, yet my speaking would be some form of heresy. As I remain in this odd paradoxical state, she stops, and turns to look at me.

Through her sorrow I see only wonder. She stares at me in confusion, and moves closer, asking for my name. I tell her that I have no name to give.

She asks again, and I tell her that I do not remember it, nor do I wish to know what it was.

She looks up, even though there is nothing to look up into, and tells me that the air whispered of my arrival. She says that she is of the path, and was born of water. She says that I have only found it, and that I was born of air. She calls me a raven, and calls herself Pisces. I spend a small while with her trying to point out the inanity of keeping titles when we are now beyond life and ownership, but she is having none of it. A bit of cheer can be seen within her, and her watery eyes now seem less mournful, and more in a state of wanting.

She stands and motions for me to look at where this place has split the trail. Looking over the hill, I see the path before me has vanished. She smiles, and takes my hand into her own, and says that this is the end of things, and that this is where she will stay.

I tell her that I am not finished, and that I yet know nothing of my end. She sits back on the stone slab, and motions for me to sit next to her. I comply.

Whispering into my ear, she tells me that contentment need not come from knowledge alone. Part of me desperately wants to agree, but now that the path has left me, I feel restless, and without any sense of hope. I tell her this, for seemingly no reason, and fear creeps across her brow. She holds her hand out and graces my face, and says that she worries for me. That she has sat here for so long awaiting me. That were I to turn away now, she would fade, and cease to be.

In my single-mindedness, I ask for her to follow me down the trail. Her reply is that she can find no path, that I am the end for her.

It seems a kindness offered to me, it seems a terrible thing offered to me. The light that signaled the trail for me starts to dim. I scream, saying that I must be on my way, that I need to follow this path to whatever end awaits me. She grabs my arm, and with surprising force, I am held at bay. The light keeps fading, and she yells at me not to leave. I tug at my arms, and I find both of them numb. Turning my attention back to her, I see a twisted smile, and a renewed spirit within me.

I pull my hands away from her, and I shove her to the ground violently. I turn and try to spy the path again from this peak, and the forest around us seems to be hiding it. I try to position myself to the direction I think I need to be heading to find the trail again, and she lunges at me and slams into my back.

My head crashes violently into the tiled floor, and for a moment I’m dazed and confused, with no sense of myself, or what’s happening. She shouts the name she’s given to me, and brings my face to look at hers. It’s filled with malice and lust, it looks different. I try to recoil in fear as I see her shift into something dangerous. Her nails are clawing at me as she shifts restlessly against my skin. I fight to get away from her, and finally remove myself from her grasp.

Standing to face her, I come across a terrible memory within my heart. The reason she is left grasping for me, like some terror reaching for prey. We share too deep an understanding of one another. We have met, we have parted, and now she seeks to do in death what she could not do in life. For a brief moment I’m watching her cry alone, swearing my name like it summons evil with it.

The distance between us shelters images of water and sky, clouds obscuring light and offering eternal shade. Her head rests on my shoulders and she says she’s been waiting for me.

Too heavily is that contrasted with what I know now.

On my knees and I can’t see. She stands shuttering with joy as I bring my hands to my face, and feel my palm go sticky with a great deal of blood clinging to it. I open my eyes and it hurts so much. The pain reaches around me in strange ways, and I’m feeling my way across the floor, trying to find where she stands, laughing at me. I feel the blood drip onto the backs of my hands, on my arms.

Standing in front of me now, her hair and eyes are fire, her skin is ice, there is nothing giving or welcoming about this frame.

We are tangled, and she seems complacent. I’m doing what I think is right, but it’s the opposite of what she needs. Slamming my face against the wall, demanding conflict. I grow impatient. She knows this. She’s playing me like a violin. I can’t tell what is bringing about the tears, but afterward, she assures me it was a wonderful thing I did.

Monster!

The things flashing through my mind makes me reach out instinctively. There is something that I missed, and I feel I need to know what it was. For my sake, or for hers, I doubt it matters.

I’m resting on my knees, so tired and beaten, too worried I can’t see what’s real and not. I’m stuck with the intentions getting crossed with the emotions. She’s smiling, and pulls my chin up to meet her gaze. She’s holding a knife, and she swipes it across my face.

I saw an explosion of thought burst forth from us both as our fingers touch again. In this shattered perception of events I see angles and prospective previously not afforded to me. My brain burns with hate and a sick sense of guilt cast at my self. I walk away, and she is left weeping. I want to comfort her, I want to make it all better… but in doing so, she would destroy me. Was it brighter where I stood, or where she lay to rest? Such seems lost now.

In my reckless youth and limited understanding, I find her smile captivating. Someone to guide me, watch me, point out everything that I was. As we walk and gaze into the water our hands connect, and the overwhelming warmth is profound, and it makes me think of things I’m not really feeling. I blind myself, because I know so little. She shelters the horrible thoughts I’ve been keeping to myself, she whispers that she can remove them.

I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, and I feel like a monster. Something cast aside that no one wanted, and as I struggle to find relevance amongst myself and my new surroundings, the only thing there to offer me any solace, is something I feel responsible for in a strange way. The words offered to me, the things I meant to say, somehow they mix into the same thing and I’m not quite sure if that’s good or bad. I just know that I feel guilty, and I want it to stop.

Turning, and she smiles.

Turning around, I find I’m bound to a tree. Shackles across my wrists rooted so deep into the trunk that it seems like they were born of it, and whilst I see nothing around me, I hear everything. Talk that they all knew. I hear a different version of what I think happened, and I am so far removed from what I’ve done, that I can’t be sure which side is right. I never spoke a word, like a terrible thing I needed no one else to know.

What returns is less a figment of memory, but rather an interpretation on a dream. Some vague form that, while nocuous, has a great amount of appeal to it. She plays with my bindings, and laughs, telling me that she’ll be my opposite for eternity. I sense this as a means of confrontation, something I need to fight away. She sees it as a means to remain with me forever. She’ll always be standing there in the dark corners of my self, telling me of her dreams and fears, ripping at me while she moans and smiles.

Are those my fears? Do I see the world as she does? Are we really as similar as I fear? I want to be nothing like her. She can’t discern between her suffering and her joy. Both are intermingled into something ugly… like us.

She seems to think that I enjoy what she does to me at this moment. Physical reaction seems to be all she has left to confuse my intentions. I yell, I scream, I kick and struggle against my chains. The trees circle around us, like people would gather to look over a corpse lying in the street.

This time they see the display. As I try to break from where she keeps me locked away. I bite and scratch and yell, my hands wrap around her throat, and I want to hear nothing she has to say.

She reaches a climax, and with it, light appears in the empty place that could be confused for a sky. For the brief moment I’m blinded by it, she scratches me with her nails until I bleed in an ornate fashion. She laughs and moves away from me, and all sense of guilt and anguish is gone from me. I can’t even lie down. I’m left shackled and bleeding, whimpering as the confusion in my mind switches between guilt and anger. The possibility of what I could do seems far more terrible than anything else.

She is not keeping me bound so that I may not flee. She is keeping me bound so I will not destroy her.

Trees lined the road, she offered me dinner. Quite older, but I loved the attention. She says that she shares my fears, enjoys our conversations. She doesn’t like to think of the end of anything, not her life, not of us. I share the sentiment. My brain at that point is so filled with static and a loss of self. The universe itself like some cruel joke… and out of the darkness a woman emerges and offers her hand.

I try to break the shackles again, and she laughs in a perverted way. I yell at her, that she is a figment of my mind that I crafted, but she is resolute, she is real, and for some reason, I can’t deny her. When her hand graces my face, I feel cold and exposed, she traces her fingers over the scars she’s left. If I were not to stay, then she would instill within me a reminder that I could not forget. The shackles break, and now they are restraining her to where I was just kept.

I reach my unbound hands, and I’m finding something made of glass and frail intentions, crying as I grace it with dirtied and stained hands.

Everyone wants me to say something. No one wants me to say anything. The voices I begged for turned, the voices that begged of me, I turned. No one must ever know, no one must see. If I could make it all vanish, I would. They have to stop blaming me at some point… they have to. I am perfectly content to blame myself, I don’t need reminders from outside my head doing the same.

So this world that stood before me in ignorance, now asks of me, and I can’t answer. I reach for her, as though she is a treasure I have dug up. She’s crying with a feeling too profound for me to understand. What is happening to me, why did I come to this place, if all I shall do now is grasp at my ignorance and cause so much harm? The branches are hands, and the trunks are bodies, and as they become an amalgamation of those surrounding me, I shelter her, secret her away from them. She wants them to see what I’ve done, what she has done to me, but I won’t stand for any of it.

Why did I torture myself so? I’ve let her take my skin and soul, body and heart. Her pain fueled by something of her that makes her just as broken as me. Together we are a symbol for all that is wrong with people. She wants the world to see how corrupt and evil this love is, I want to pretend that things will get better. I run to the fantasies I locked away in my mind to say that it will get better, that we will change, grow…

I leave her to whatever she feels, and I stand amongst the wood, and the wind has died away, whispering nothing now. They stare at me, knowing that what I have partaken of isn’t the loss of love or lust, I’m merely broken, and she is broken too. We can never be whole, not alone, not with others, not with each other. We are drowning in what we are meant to be.

She wants this to be a lie, she wants what they say to mean nothing. She takes my hand and shows me a light that seems so far away from me. It is oddly compelling. She says that we can take it, that we can climb to a peak behind us both, and there she will forget the dark things in her mind, her confusion and anger. There she says I will cause no more harm, that what I think and feel and say will finally align. I don’t look at the same direction, there is something even further away, opposite from where she wants to take me.

We could break the universe, and try to bring about displays to say that we are not the only ones like this… but I do not care. If what I see in my mind for myself is merely fantasy, then I shall entertain no other illusion than that one. I will not lie with one side and say to the other that I am truth.

I sit her down, and I shackle her to the trees again. I stare at her with a cold face, and say nothing. I turn, and I leave her there.

She screams, she cries, she’s begging me to let her go. I have, she hasn’t released me. I find that ironic. I turn and look at her, and she’s no longer some demonic and wild thing, the sense of new discovery is gone, and I just look at a broken woman, who is begging for a broken man. I can’t help myself, I can’t help her. I’ve died, and she’s dying, I’ll let it remain that way.

Still… there’s something within that sorrow that seems inviting to me. A welcome hand that speaks to me of the knowledge this pain brings… something relatable and warm. I am distracted from her sight by a soft glow from the corner of my eye.

I see the path ahead lighting the dark wood, I wonder how I could have forgotten it. Turning again, my sight beholds the same person I chained, but with different figure and form, and a seemingly indifferent face. Another tree holds the same thing again, but it looks at me with an evil grin.

I am not this. I… was, but no more.

I’ll give my hatred and insecurity to someone else… or something else. I don’t think it’s wanted here. The corners of my mind I retreat from, no person will ever make them safer places to tread.

I begin to walk back to the trail, and I hear screaming so intense that my form is rendered useless. My body falls to the ground and I lose control over every function. With great difficulty, I pull myself up, and the glow is so bright that I see the wood as though it were noontime. A stark cloudless white hangs over these gray leafless trees, and then as the screaming stops, it all falls dark again, and the path is my only source of light. I begin to run towards the trail, and as I do, I feel the branches of the trees try to snag at me, ripping at clothing and flesh. A rumble shakes the earth below, and I look behind me, to see a vague shape meant to mock a hand reach down from the sky. The giant limb plucks away a handful of trees, and another soon descends from the heavens to do the same thing.

I run as fast as my weak legs will carry me, trying to avoid the thousands of hands reaching out to try and find me, if that is their purpose. I can’t guess at what they intend, I only know that I must be rid of them.

I find that I have died before even waking. There is so much left here that I wanted to say, do, retreat from, and as it all tries to envelope me, I find yet again that my reaction is to flee, to be as far away from consequence as possible.

I stop as I see a hand reach in front of me. Ripping away a giant patch of trees, I see corpses left in the hold in where it dug. They appear drained of all but skin and their bones, and they’re covered in dirt and small holes that prod into various spots on their skin. I think I can recognize a few of them…

Forcing myself out of my stupor I look again, and see that the trail is close to me. I run around the spots where the hands dig, avoiding them as best I can.

At last my feet stand upon the trail again, and I see the comforting ripples my feet make upon it.

As I look back to the wood, I see the trees replaced with people, their bodies stretched and torn to mock the shape of the things torn away from the soil. In the sky swims the thousand hands that tore away the wood, and replaced it with these dead things. They interlock and untangle in a display that would likely be more enchanting were the stars set to illuminate the scene.

The eyes of the dead things are set to look at this sky as well, their hands reaching not for sunlight to nourish their roots, but for what they were torn from. Lower towards the ground, I see other hands, they still reach for me, they still want to claim me.

Never to yield, never to surrender, I try to remember which direction is forwards, and I begin to walk again. The wind doesn’t help the fake trees to whisper now, instead it carries their moaning and anguish. Familiar notes strike my ears like a hammer, but I try my damndest to shut it away. I have a direction I am to struggle with; I cannot remember those led astray.

But I was the one to lead them astray… wasn’t I? I understand nothing of what they speak, but there’s an odd sense of belonging in the dead here. They all make so much noise, but the aimlessness and starkness of their forms makes this place feel painfully lonely. For a brief moment, I contemplate returning to the tree I chained them to, to the pinnacle of this place where I was held at bay, where I got this scar on my chest. No… I carried this before death.

That anger still seethes within me, and on my flesh it threatens to devour me whole. Back into my brain, and I’m shoving a face against the wall. I’m doing something awful, but everyone is smiling like an idiot.

Deeper, they’d say. Drive it deeper!

My head is out of a window late in the morning, and in the back seat of the car, laughter, at how I’m so willingly allowing myself to be the butt of a joke. I wasn’t joking though. Pushing it through, the sun was coming through the windows, and I hadn’t slept at all. She sat across from me in the back, and smiled. I tried my best to ignore her. She is not my savior.

Deeper. I don’t want this! I want it out of my brain! I am dead, I don’t need this haunting me.

The trees loom over me again, not as people, but as places, driving their selves into me. Deeper. I hear chains dangling far behind me, and I’m running. I think I’m running away from me.

As I am flooded with more memories, I see why this place is so loathsome. What I did upon the peak, what I did… all of it from me, from them. Congealed into a mess, and at the best of times, I’d find only anger in my soul as I try to reflect upon it all. I want it out of me, and it just goes deeper… like I do, when told to stop.

I look up and knock the smile off my face as I see the hands descend again from the skies, this time in mass.

This time it’s true, this time I’ll be welcomed, but I’ll just lash out in violence again like always. I have become everything I feared I would here, and the faces around me are laughing, or saying nothing.

All I can do, is walk further, and try to tell myself that it wasn’t real. Like a dream upon waking, I’ll be away from these woods, and I’ll find it all to be some cruel trick.

They try to rip the path out from under my feet, but I will have none of it.

I’m standing far away from it all, and I can grab at the bodies and beat on them until all of those beautiful colors emerge. I’ll drive it deeper, as I feel that knot in my throat return, and my head starts to throb in rhythmic fashion. This is a part of me, I’ll use it to get through what I need!

This is all I can do, watching it turn into a giant mess before me, and I want to smile, but I’m coming off of it. I pull myself back, and I grab at my skull trying to understand this ebb and flow. I needed help to get through it.

But that wasn’t her place. She wanted it to go deeper. All I can do, this is what I built. This is my path, and I’ll have nothing take it away. The hands are grabbing one another for safety, and my gaze is enough to make them bleed. I derive much from it.

The trees form around me trying to offer me thanks and regrets, but the wind won’t whisper through them. The path loses its sense of light, and I stand there in a stupor just wanting it all to go away. I want to say that this is not what I was… but I can’t deny that.

I stand alone in the woods, with no path to follow now. I stand alone, trying to remember how to push myself deeper down the trail.

I stand alone, and I feel horrible… guilty… wrong.

From water due rise, from the turbulent tide, a name given, a name stolen, secrets kept like children. From her hair to her feet a dangerous tone emerges, voices seductive and preaching of knowing. That knowledge not well earned, that knowledge taken, and when with it, one is left only to look backwards and take in that knowing is a dire and awful thing.

From the innocence of my eyes to the winds that would blow strong enough to injure my pride, I was taken under the current and dragged away kicking and screaming. Only once it was gone, did I understand that I never wanted to get rid of the things she said she could remove from me.

Something perfect, an incorruptible visage to act like a drug for me. I breathe her in, and she never leaves from that spot. An albatross whispering songs to me. Telling me that she’ll remove the ugly marks on my face, telling me that my hair falls differently when she’s around. Without her, everything falls apart. With her, I am bound to a life I never wanted.

She stole the moon from the sky, and now as I stand without its glow, darkness reigns, and if it were to shift, the sun would consume everything. I know I am not first to suffer this, and likely will not be the last. The affects ring across my head for all these years, and I’m left wondering where intent meets with fate.

Walking alone through the night after muting all the cries, I must be strong, and remain above belief and fear; the only sound I shall enjoy is that of my footsteps. I love the rhythm of marching away from this. She treads through shadow like it’s the evil whispered in story books. I find refuge in it. Here, I am by myself, alone with my thoughts, wandering down the trail as my footsteps click and make a sound that has nothing to echo off of. The excited cries shout once, and then vanish.

Never to return… much like the things I gave away.

As they would say, I give cheers to oblivion, jumping headlong and stupidly into whatever may await me. I could spend eternity lamenting how empty this part of the trail is, but how would that improve anything? Were I to fill it, all I would do is remake the wood I have just fled from. I will not let myself be bound and humiliated by the sirens of my past. Let them wallow in songs of guilt and my terrible deeds.

I don’t feel anything.

-  -  -  -  -

Am I still tough enough?
Feels like I’m wearing down (down, down)
Is my viciousness, losing ground (ground, ground)?
Am I taking too much?
Did I cross the line (line, line)?
I need my role in this
Very clearly defined

I need your discipline
I need your help
I need your discipline
You know once I start, I cannot help myself

I seek solitude. I find refuge in this path. I find strength in the ignorance of my surroundings. I am here, and I’ve been here before. I’ve never traversed this place to a large degree, but I’m already so familiar with its functions, every detail of it stands out to me.

I am also not the only thing that has come here, for these same reasons.

The early part of this place is hotter than where I came from. Bodies line the path, they are the stones laid before everyone. A man or woman falls, and they become part of the bedrock that creates this trail, the devils and the gods they built join them, rubble amongst the foundation. A line extends everywhere, and the bodies are like walls, so crammed close to one another they are. They hate this closeness; they hate everyone they’re stuffed up against. They try to fight their way out, and all it does is cause a surge of angry flesh to ripple like a wave set into motion by the moon.

I’m walking on a trail of broken hands and skulls. There is no grass, but instead a carpet of hair and skin, where occasionally eyeballs jut up with sorrowful or angered expressions.

Some lines end with people frantically gathering around a trough, and pushing one another out of the way so that they can drink of a foul and viscous oil. I see their eyeballs melt because of the toxins they ingest, but they keep trying to shove their way back for more. Eventually many are dissolved into husks, and eager mouths will grip them with teeth to try and bleed them of the oil that burns their bodies.

I have only just started along this path, and already I am yelling at myself, the same things the broken bodies below me are yelling. That I will not transcend from what they are, that I will fall into this path like they have. Hands stuck in the ground try and grip at me as I make my way past, and I must be careful in each step I take. Those with any degree of freedom think they are removed from it. They are unsure which side of the cage they are on, why they should be gazing out of it. They think themselves trapped, broken arms and torsos twisted into a prison for them.

What I think keeps me from them, is how aware I am of them. I hate them, I hate that I am like them, and I try to desperately resist what they so easily give into. Likely many of them also think this. I have no idea why I am different. My feet tracing this path is not some divine gift I think, I am often contrite as to why I can walk it, while others are set as its foundation.

Another branch separates into an endless stream of nude and dirt covered bodies. The fat and the old are all trying to reach a feast of children, trying to pretend that the physical act of destroying them will somehow restore their horrid frames.

A wall of human flesh masks it all, but from my vantage point I see all of the terrible display. One corner is filled with fat old men of pale color, and they seem interested in the wide and sorrowful display of young females at their side of the table. They masturbate and laugh and push at one another to get a great view and to break the bones of their feast, ripping at each of them to get their fair share. At another end of the makeshift table, women sit and prey on young men like spiders. Their tongues leak out of many sides, splitting apart, and they cover the poor boys. They try their best to enshroud the little ones. I hear from far off the screams not of the children, but of them all. The boys calling out for the safety of their parents, while the females trying to eat them alive call for their fathers, and the fat old men cry out for nothing more than approval, but their noises are drowned out by the tears they’re creating, unaware that only they can make it stop.

Only one side of this horrible scene is free of people pushing and shoving at one another. They all bow in reverence to the men that stand at the top. They rest on a throne of corpses, the young killed to make way for the old to thrive. Broken backs and bleeding mouths, and they’re saying nothing. They wear the burned skins of others, fashioned into suits to try and separate themselves from the rest with fine dress and style. Grand faces perched at the top, their power and influence allowing them to get the pick of the litter. Little girls, and boys made to look like little girls. They thrive on the fear, the tears that stream down from the faces of the broken act as the greatest display in their primal gratification.

The shrieks of the orgy are a mask that I can pierce through though. I do not see children being grabbed at. I see dirt and stones and twigs. I see mud and pathetic people trying to hold onto it. The frames of the youth they clutch don’t cry, they don’t feel guilty, and that drives them all insane. Instead they laugh, they prod at them, bite at them, and they’re not even there. So often does this display shift, that it appears from this far away to be like a living wave of anguish.

These were all but tiny displays for this place though. As I reach closer, I see the desperation grow.

One of the more grand displays comes upon me. On one side, many people eagerly rush to fill a void, and from that void, a hand emerges made up of the bodies willing to conform. It reaches out, and is trying to grasp at a brilliant figure above them all. The radiance of the thing stands in stark contrast to the rest of this pathetic existence, but no matter how many bodies are added to the hand, it fails to reach at this being. People fall from this thing, and plummet to the soil below. They create a broken circle that surrounds the hand in a symbolic fashion. The figure above, genderless and toneless, smiles at them all, and waves, and they think it an amazing gift, and do not see that it is mocking them. They made it, and they want it.

On the other side, another hand is created, but what is dangled above it is less tangible than salvation. Instead, it is a shifting thing that turns itself into the visage of what they each crave unfairly. What it looks like to me points that I still share some link with these beasts, and seeing them all reach for it makes me sick to my stomach. But that isn’t what they see…

These hands shift and turn like in a trance, and a grand thing stands between them, controlling them, lashing out when they grow too tall, or too bold. He has two mouths opposite each other, and as he stands in the middle of this display, each mouth whispers different things to each of the grotesque hands. The rest of his face is covered with eyes, and a crown made of teeth like spikes juts from his head. His skin shifts and convulses in a lustful way, and his name is Greed. All before him are left for wanting, and all are removed of his sight, that they are unaware of this beast.

As I try to pull myself away from this part of the trail, I see that finally the mobs of bodies are pulled away and give way to a lesser scattering of souls. Still the form of the trail remains the same, but now more specific things are emerging from it, and idiots blind to their needs are left running each time they see something they desire.

As I walk further on, there are less people than ever. However, there is an even greater array of junk for them to pacify their selves with. On screens, some are flattered to have their views of hatred validated by a talking skull in a well dressed suit, claiming that his propaganda is the way the world must spin. Some others are glued helplessly to other bright screens, projecting images of innocent young women in compromising moments, and the idiots drooling over it have some sense of security and pride as a result of it. One in particular looks out at me, and asks me if I’ve seen the person he obsesses over. He points to a blank image, and I must confess that I have no idea what he is talking about. He gazes at the screen again, and cords enter his ears and eyes, and he says that he’ll wait an eternity for “her.” I would laugh at him, but I find him a pitiable soul. A loss of hope leads one to cope in any way possible. I don’t think I should judge any soul in this phase of the trail.

In some parts, people are gathered in a circle, but they all face away from one another, and they don’t say a word. They spend their time interchanging emotions, and it seems to almost have a strange pattern to it. A woman starts to cry, and when she stops, a man across from her begins to fume in rage. When he stops, the man next to him looks terrified, and it continues around this chain of people. They don’t seem to even know they’re sitting next to anyone.

There seems an ebb and flow to this trail. At first there was such a crush of bodies that it seemed oppressive and never ending, and for a time after that, it all seemed empty and still. Now I see a large gathering in the horizon.

What finally shoots up from the helpless and scattered, are two violent groups waving bits of paper in a strange dance. Each one has the same face, and with their free hands they try to rip the faces off. The other hand is almost forced to hold the paper high, each one detailing how their souls were given to cause. The faces differ between the two groups, and are only further differentiated by where they each bleed. They are clawing at themselves, their bodies writhe, but their arms are held high with their proclamations, and their mouths all regurgitate the same well rehearsed speech.

Time does not exist, so it stands as a useless means to measure how long I have traversed this trail. I find that I am slowly being worn down though. Likely this is how other souls are added to the trail. They go as far as they can, until finally they yield, and accept their selves to be trampled underfoot. I am trying desperately to remain steadfast in my dedication to not be like them. All of the horrible displays I see, are contrasted with an oddity in my eyes, as I have partaken of all of these things just as any other would. I contemplate how I am different, but the horrible truth that everyone here is trying to avoid, is that I am not. They are not different either. The weight of what they’ve done varies by morality or monetary means, but they’ve all spent an eternity running from their selves, and now they have nowhere left to go. They can avoid each other no longer.

As I stand and watch, the people with their bits of paper held high seem to fade away, and as they slowly shuffle off to one side or another, I see giant figures land upon the earth below. Machines made of bones and blood look around with careless eyes. They vomit out pure faces that have been sewn onto wooden frames, the skin rotted and lifeless. Strings shoot out and into the sky, and one each side of me this process is exactly the same.

A cry shoots out giving itself to disillusion, and the hands of those now left on the side lines reach wide as they scream for the death of evolution. They accept no rogues or differing sides amongst their puppetry, and they all bite at each other to provide a meal as they enjoy the display.

Tools once made to gather and harvest, are now the means to perpetuate pointless atrocity. The land behind those whose strings were cut is populated by the living machines, and they are heartless and efficient as they watch streams of puppets fall down before them. Gazing at this display with anger, I know that I can do nothing for it. To stop it, means I must become it, and I wish for myself not to be so hypocritical. Instead I leave them to their slaughter, as those that once cheered and bit at others are now being converted. Now their faces are sewn onto the wooden dolls.

Within a very limited span, there is a field of broken dolls and dead faces looking into the sky. The bone crafted machines start to gather the dead, and those left that want to claw their faces away are now enthralled and cheering for their victory. They haven’t the faintest idea what the word means, the blood that runs from their wounds shows this, they know it as well as I do.

The flow starts to lessen again, and the last remnant of people are random poles stuck in the ground. People are chained to them, and blindfolded. They say nothing; they do not weep, or even try to acknowledge anything around them. Soon though, I’m back to a still quiet, with nothing around me aside from the trampled souls that comprise the path.

The culmination of this is a very empty place, and a mighty seat of thorns rests under a fall of life giving blood. It is taller than any structure ever built by human craft, but what rests upon it is very mortal.

The mournful creature that rests upon it is an amalgamation of every soul birthed and put to rest. Its eyes are heavy, its skin charred and cut. A genderless model is bathed in the fluid that made it, but it can’t find life. It looks over a vast landscape of nothing, and stands as its ruler. A being made to govern an empty place, where all that remains is the brooding and contemplation of existence… a quandary with no answer or ending. It is the Crown Nothing.

I think myself to converse with this thing, but it looks at me very knowingly, and points to its chest, and then onwards down the path. It is of me, it was for me, as it was for every being that shared life. It rejects me, and for whatever reason, that parting feels somewhat bitter and cold. It makes me look at the rest of this place with hateful eyes again, my conjecture is still ultimately pointless, but seems more profane now than ever.

It is their need to be by themselves, contrasted with the paradox in that they all seek a grand acceptance of life and spiritual enlightenment. They all push and shove and hate at one another, but they spend just as much time lusting over that which they do not have. I should not be avoiding their fate, and what has given me cause to be free from it does not make me remarkable in any way, shape, or form. I am of them and they of me, but the large body before me says that I must march further down this path.

I ask it why I must leave, when everything about this place is so fitting for the everyone that marches within it. It shrinks away and fades for a moment, leaving only the seat and the fall of life soaking it. I look around and behind me, and realize something harsh and unnerving. As it shows itself to me again, I kneel before it, and I begin to form what I think are tears, but it feels so new and cold.

It is not of everyone, it is of no one. I am a singular being, in a place of my own making. No one has ever existed here, save for me. Needing no urging or guidance, I break into a sprint down the rest of the trail, the bodies and foundation now turning into strange things of diluted color. If this place is of myself, and no one else, then I do not wish to remain within it. Too much time could be spent wallowing in the sins of all mankind, and no one is a decent enough soul to rise above the filth.

A beacon looms out distant like a star, and I would chase it just to find the end of this trail. I cannot remove myself from my sins, or the crimes of others. I can’t repent for it, I can’t make it better. It all floods into this place, for everyone, like it has for me. A unity shared through isolation. Every color that was washes away, and I see only the brightness of the trail, and the shadow of everything else. I cannot remove myself from this, and running only delays things further… but I make down the path with much haste anyways.

I started upon this path with my death. I begin to wonder what would happen if I were to find the end of this trail, or if it even has one. I am torn between an ever growing sense of self, and a fear of an endless cycle remaining unbroken. The trail feels lonely now, and like the rest I have abandoned, I almost wish I hadn’t cursed at their existence, as now my lonely thoughts drive me to places far too introspective. For whatever reason, I cannot remember how I died. I can only remember the things surrounding it. Turmoil of self and a fractured state of what I was, and the blood and tears that followed suit… though I am not sure if those things left were genuine, or merely what I would think of to be in that place. My thoughts are like a mirror in an empty room with nothing to reflect, and so I must turn inwards, away from the bad dreams and torment that everyone subjects themselves to. I must press further down this trail.

-   -   -   -   -

Let me go today and please don’t plan to follow me
I won’t be nothing hurting no-one, so just let me go in peace
See I believe that I’d be justified in why I gotta leave
Repeatedly that I will see that I am finally at ease
I will be living on these roads again
Let me go in peace
Let me go in peace
Let me go in peace

The Book of the Wavering: Many Hands

At an early age, a boy named Call, had many different arms, and many different hands upon those arms. Most would insult him, or say that he was a defective person, but he took these in stride, and thought himself the better person for never responding to the name calling.

In fact, he used his many arms, and many hands, to great effect. He operated seven looms at a single time, and could make all sorts of fabric and cloth as a result.

This became his trade, and he settled into a simple life. However, while he sold his wares well, he did not make many friends, and never had a spouse to share his life with. What he always thought of as the best part of himself, made him a pariah to the rest of the world.

In sorrow one day, he cut off all of his extra arms, trying to make himself look like a normal man. As a result, he could no longer operate his looms, and became poor, eventually losing his home. He discovered that looking normal still made him no friends, as now he looked nothing more than an ordinary homeless man.

When winter came, he died in the cold, while many that ignored him, kept warm in coats woven from fabric that he made.

-   -   -   -   -

“Pop! I found some!” She was giddy, and jumped up and down with a great abundance of energy. He seemed to match her enthusiasm, but he was far more restrained in expressing it.

“Well, would you look at that, a nice small patch of them! Oh, the many must have known we would be here this day.” He scratched at her head for a moment, fussing with her hair. She feigned annoyance for a moment, but was still smiling.

“Are we going to bring them to Momma?” She gently touched one of them for a small moment.

“No, we’ll let them grow.” He sat down in the grass a small ways from the patch of flowers, and motioned for her to sit beside them. He set his bag down as well, and started reaching for things in it.

Alia looked up at her father, not sure what his brain was transfixed on. She’d often hear her mother make similar complaints as well, that his smile was always somehow genuine, yet beguiling. At last he found a pad of paper, and a set of markers and inks. He handed them to her, and pointed at the patch of tulips.

“We’ll capture an image of them instead, but with nothing so crude as a direct view. Little lunar one, you’ll make an image of what you see, in eyes, and heart.”

“So… you want me to draw a picture of them? Mother has a garden full of them, what good do pictures do?” She squinted at the markers, and then at the flowers, briefly readjusting her glasses.

“Well, my dear Alia, if ownership is all that matters in it, what purpose does a gift ever have? If you put such terms upon it, it’s just like any other transaction.”

“I don’t understand…” He just smiled, and looked at her, his furiously blue eyes soothed her in many ways she couldn’t quite place words to.

“Just look at them, and capture this moment as best you can. Any skill or ability is meaningless. What is conveyed will be more than adequate.”

Her father set the items before her, and said nothing else. Alia looked at them with trepidation, and what could be seen as a slight amount of fear. As though the expectation placed on her was great, and she knew she could not live up to it. She squinted hard at the flowers again as well.

“Mean father. I can’t draw, or paint. I don’t know art.”

“Everyone knows art.” A giggle escaped him.

“I’ll make an ugly thing.”

“A gift for your Mother would be anything but an ugly thing.”

“Kindness only in the gifting, is that what you mean?” She grabbed at one of the markers, and placed some ink inside of it, still glancing over to her father for advice, or something.

“That depends, child, on what you create. Don’t think of how skilled you are. Think only of what you want to escape from your heart.”

“I’m not quite sure what that is, odd father.”

“Many people that create things never are.”

“Again… I don’t understand.”

“You will…”

She just pouted, before going back to the task her father had set to her. She had mused with other children her age that speaking of things long from now was often a parent’s way of escaping the need to answer questions. Still though, she enjoyed the times her father would bring her here, and promised her mother that she would bring something back. She spent not a long time on it, and tried her best to capture what she saw before her, a small patch of tulips growing out of the grasses and other weeds in the area. Her father knew she’d be nervous if he was looking over her shoulder the entire time, so instead of giving her the fear of judgment, he stood up, and started to gaze about the landscape, as though he was looking for someone.

Alia finished rather quickly, and was already disappointed in what she had made. It was very clearly the drawing of a child, and she felt that it in no way encapsulated what actually rested before her. She’d rather just picked some of the flowers, or taken a picture with a camera.

She put the inks away, but didn’t alert her father, instead she marveled at the landscape before her. The Seveter was said to be tended to by shapers, but it was a wild and strange place. Plants grew with little care for one another, pushing others out of their way, as though all the strange and beautiful forms were competing for the attention of those that would travel here. It wasn’t a long distance from where she lived, though she and her father still took the train to arrive here.

Her father finally interrupted her day dreaming.

“Finished, are you, Alia?”

She grumbled as he gazed at the picture.

“It’s terrible.”

“Strike that from you, and watch this.”

He grabbed her hand, and put it on the paper, and made her swipe it across the paper. As her hand flew across it, she noticed the ink swirl about, and make a new shape on the page. She did this many more times without his assistance, and soon beheld that her image was far different. The colors were fierce, contrasting sharply with the black outlines of the shapes, and there was an edge of the world around the tulips now as well, before everything faded to the white edges of the page again. It was far different from what she made, but was still also far different than the actual sight that was before her.

“How…”

“I still have some tricks I know of. Age has one benefit, and that’s knowledge, and temperance.”

“This isn’t what I made at all.”

“No,” he laughed. “It’s what you wanted to make.”

She smiled, and quickly went to put the picture into his bag, for safe keeping. He reached out to her, and hoisted her up to give her a piggyback ride. He trotted a little ways off, when Alia noted that her father usually had a reason to bring her out to this place.
“Odd Poppa, did we only come here so I could make that picture?”

“Of course not. We’re meeting friends on this, your day of days.”

“Who?” she hoped that by friends, he meant her friends, and not his.

“Your aunt Veln, among others.”

“Sing-song Winter!” Alia normally found a lot of her extended family boring, but Winter was one that she very much enjoyed spending time with.

“Well, you’re in bright spirits again.” He jumped a bit, making her bump upwards a bit, and she giggled.

Another reason he kept her close was his own seeming awareness for Alia to wander in some parts of Seveter. While most of the garden seemed content to fight amongst itself, there were a few things she needed to be kept aware of, but never paid attention to. The oils on some of the vines could cause fever, and the thorns on others would often impart a nasty infection to its victims. Alia just looked around in awe the entire time.

“Could I make my wish today, to stay here until nightfall, Poppa?” A very real enthusiasm in her tone.

“And ignore your mother, and what she’s done for you today? That would make you a cruel one, daughter.”

“I mean nothing like that.”

“But you mean exactly that. Were you to do such, your mother’s planning and goodwill will be spat at by you.” He did not glance over his shoulder to her with scorn, but again she saw a playfulness in his eyes. “Besides, all your friends from school will be there today.”

Alia quizzed him on which faces she knew would arrive, and he answered the best he could. After a little ways, they found a man made path lined with a small brown fence, which led out of Seveter, and towards the train station.

“Sing-Song Winter waits for us?” She asked.

“Yes. Veln will be waiting for us at the platform. I hear from her friend that she has a gift for you.”

“I need nothing from her,” Alia remarked. “Nothing but a new song at a time or two.”

“Veln does know many.”

Finding redundancy in the conversation, Alia rested her head on her father’s shoulder, and began to contemplate the many events the day still had in mind for her. She didn’t really think a birthday was worth celebration, but her parents put much effort into the event, and Alia did not refuse good company and freshly baked sweets.

After a small time, they emerged from the wild garden, and into a small flat plain of well tended grass. Across from that, there was a train platform, which seemed the only building of manmade origin in this two sided emptiness. To one side, there was Seveter, and to the other, a seemingly endless expanse of hills and plains that ran for as far as Alia could see. Granted, without her glasses, she could see very little.

Alia dropped off her father’s shoulders, and reacquainted herself with walking and standing. As soon as she had a decent grasp of gravity again, she darted for the sheltered platform, a rich mixture of dull colors and black metal bars lining things like an artistically placed spider web, amongst a grand marble floor.

She took a quick glance around the resting area, and at first saw no one.

“My, little sky one grows so abundantly each time I see her.” It was a deep and authoritative female voice that came from behind her.

Alia turned, and saw a woman in brightly colored garb, which contrasted sharply with her deep brown skin. She held a bag at her side, and a closed umbrella in her other hand.

“Sing-Song Winter!” Alia screeched. Immediately she darted across the gap between the two, and nearly tackled the woman to give her a hug.

“Yes child, it’s good to see you too… and a happy birthday, I might add!”

Alia pulled herself away, and looked up at this very imposing woman, who wore a warm smile.

“I’m nine years old today!” She spoke enthusiastically. “Are you coming to my party, Sing-Song?”

The dark skinned woman nodded, and then turned her gaze to Alia’s father.

“And Townser, it’s been far too long!” She ignored Alia for a moment, and went to give Townser a hug. Townser fussed with her hair like he did with Alia’s, and while Winter quickly slapped his hand away and gave him a mean look, Alia thought it a great amusement, to see that she wasn’t the only one subjected to such an annoyance.

“Always good to see you again, Veln.” Townser added, and motioned for the three of them to sit on a steel bench that looked towards the tracks.

Alia did not sit with them, but instead she played a game where she tried to hop on certain colors on the marble floor, while avoiding putting her feet anywhere else. Her father and Winter already seemed deep in conversation.

“And how is the mistress Ariak, Townser?”

“She’s fine, been a bit stressed lately, trying to bring this party together. I’ll admit I’ve been of very little assistance.” Winter laughed as he spoke that.

“What’s so funny?”

“It reminds me of a joke I told mistress Ariak when Alia was first born.”

“Which is?”

“That I felt sorry for her, as she now had two children to contend with.”

Townser seemed at the brink of indignation, but instead burst out into laughter.

“I guess I can’t really refute such a claim.”

Winter made a strange sound, and gestured for Alia’s attention.

“What say you little one, how much trouble on a given day does Townser here burden your mother with?”

“Lots!” She held her arms wide for dramatic effect. Winter chuckled, but now Townser seemed to feel a bit more embarrassed rather than playing into the joke. He seemed a little eager now to steer the conversation in a new direction, and as he did, he instantly lost Alia’s attention again.

“How goes your studies, Veln?”

She too seemed somber now.

“They go well. I have many able bodied to help me, so most of my time is spent in my lab. Still though, for all the progress I make, there are still so many sick. It seems endless at times. I relish these chances I get to spend among the living…”

Townser peered over to where Winter had set her bag, and saw his daughter creeping towards it, slowly reaching out her hand, oblivious that she had been caught already. He reached out and cut off Winter’s flow of speech, and smacked Alia on her wrist.
“Manners, young miss!” he shouted.

Alia instantly retreated, and saw Winter grabbing the bag and pulling it away from her, feeling even worse that her aunt was now angry with her as well.

“Honestly,” her father continued. “You can wait an entire year, and now you’re told to wait just a little longer, and you can’t heed such a request?!”

“Likely she gets that from you,” Winter remarked slyly.

“Veln, please.” There was a very real disappointment in her father’s tone that made her feel awful.

Alia retreated further away from them both, and felt only angry eyes staring at her. Without realizing it herself, she began to cry. For a small moment she tried to form words to offer up some level of defense towards her father and her aunt, but as she only babbled, their stares did not change. They began to fade as well, as her glasses started to fog up.

She huddled into a ball, and tried to slow the torrent and noise, but felt largely unsuccessful.

As their gazes still remained fixed on her, a shallow noise began to smother the sounds of her crying. It was like an engine moving through deep water, but the distance the sound traveled was still dense and wide. Alongside it came the noise of splashing and other aquatic noises. It was as though a noisy fountain shooting through the sky. Townser reached for his pocket watch, and checked the time.

“Always late at this hour.” Townser spoke somberly.

The train at last pulled into the station, along its bottom were no tracks, but a pool of water that seemed to follow it wherever it went. It was a shining and grand thing, but for whatever reason it also looked very old. Her mother had said it to be a very new thing to the areas they lived in, but to Alia, it seemed like an ancient relic awakening each time it pulled into the station.

Winter approached Alia, and offered her hand to the girl. Alia retreated further again, nodding her head, as though some feeling of guilt still existed to make such an offer a wrong thing. Townser moved Winter aside, and picked Alia up, and held her close.

“There there,” he whispered. “Do not let this sully your day.”

He called out for Winter, she produced three tickets, and they stood near one of the doors, waiting for it to open. As it slid upwards, a very strange and very tall man walked out. He wore a finely pressed suit, which bore symbols to show that he would take their tickets, but he had an odd face. Strangely pale and he had no mouth or nose, but instead, just a second set of smaller eyes below his normal ones. He also only had two fingers and a thumb on each hand, which Alia assumed to be an oddity as well, considering everyone she knew, had five fingers per hand. He bowed before the three, and made a deep clicking noise twice. Winter handed him the tickets, and her pressed all three against his forehead, before handing them back. He gestured for them all to board the train, and they did.

Winter held onto both Townser’s and her own bag, as her father kept trying to sooth her guilt away. Eventually they came to an isle in the very fancy and somewhat uncomfortably cold train, and he sat Alia next to the window.

The conversation seemed dull, but her father kept making motions to try and calm her, and wash away the bad feeling that she was awash with. He pointed to the window as the train left the station, and admittedly her worry did dissipate a little as she started to look out at the sights. The gardens looked out at her from a cleanly cut horizon, their wild limbs and plants shooting up into the sky like a protest, or a fond farewell being bid to her. As they pulled away further from that, she saw far back from the garden, a mighty black shadow that stood out amongst the sky like a spike, so obscure was it that Alia thought it almost a world away. Once the gardens were away from sight, the train turned away from the planes, and eventually came to be very near a Cliffside, overlooking the sea. While this route was very coastal, Alia would still see how the train would turn in between towns and hillsides every once and awhile. As she kept looking, she felt her eyes grow heavy for a moment, but soon an awareness of that struck her, and she turned to her father.

“Make cry father, trade seat with Sing-Song!”

“Hmm?” He popped his nose from a book to look at her with confusion for a brief moment. “What’s this all about?”

“Sorrow make switches places with Sing-Song!”

“Fine, fine, as you wish, pushy little birthday girl.” Townser tapped Winter on the shoulder, and motioned for the two to switch spots.

As Winter made herself comfortable again, she looked at Alia and smiled.

“And what is the cause for this, my dear one?”

Alia smiled wider.

“Sing-Song, for my birthday, can you sing me a new song?”

“Of course I can,” muttered Winter, who picked Alia up, and sat her on her lap.

As Alia rested her head on her aunt’s shoulder, she took one more brief glance out the window, and closed her eyes, as Winter began to sing to her softly.

There’s a lot that I’ve done wrong, but I think my one big regret, amongst all others, is destroying space and time as we currently know it. Bear in mind, this hasn’t taken place yet… well, kind of now, but previously, and soon, not now though. It’s complicated.

Either way, I was moping about in a general haze amongst a very stark yet somewhat intriguing empty bit of space. There was a distortion of self that took place, had to go and shift between multiple planes of being to comprehend what I was seeing and shit. One of the me’s outside inside myself found a room with a button.

The button seemed innocent enough, but there was a really fucking long manual next to it. So again I had to fracture my perception of being, just to speed up the process. I mean, forever is a really long time, but with time a malleable thing, I don’t have much time. You get really busy when you’re nothing and nowhere.

Some of the warnings didn’t even make much sense, and yet, they were oddly personal and understanding. One section detailed how to properly maintain chlorine levels in a swimming pool of average size, as well as consoling me on previous blunders in regards to my failed relationships. Another section spent a lot of time talking about concept albums, and how to build a coal fire oven.

In regards to the button? I couldn’t find a damn thing. There was a button, and there was an extensive document on everything I had done, will do, and would soon regret. That’s when I got an idea! If I pushed the button, then it would be a part of the section on things that I did. That didn’t make sense though, as clearly I was interested in this button, so NOT pushing it would obviously have been covered already in the section of things I held with deep regret.

Nine thousand me’s read this giant document four thousand times, and each time, not a goddamn word on the button. Many things changed in terms of intention and regret, but there was NEVER anything about the button.

There were odd things in the times before rooms like this started to spread like the Black Death. A plague of empty ideas, a parade of empty meaning and questionless answers. If they were not everywhere, then every me just so happened to find them all. Each one, something inside, just to mock how empty everything else was.

In one of them? A Pepsi machine. Another one? A coat rack covered in tin foil. The button was the only one that presented a paradox to any of me.

So… maybe I should explain, for the sake of myself back then, and me currently, and I think there’s a lot of me soon after this that’s a little fuzzy as well. I am going to push the button. You see, one part of my brain will eventually get enough focus to understand that focus was the problem. With my attention drawn to the button, I was in a perpetual state of pushing it, and not pushing it. It never became a part of my future, nor was it ever something I would regret not doing.

So for about two seconds… well, it was either two seconds, or three hundred and fifty seven years, but that’s not the point. For a very small fraction of time, I congealed, and I pushed the fucking button. Me as a singular… me as a mistake.

You see, I never really actually took time to think about what the button may or may not do. I was mostly just confused as to why nothing in the manual of instructions that was my life pointed to what the button did. When I finally separated again, and looked for what it did, the page said only this:

“This button was made by something far greater than you, it is a failsafe. Under no circumstance, should you even consider pushing the button. But seeing as you did anyways, you should be well aware that you just hit the reset button on existence, now set to be determined at a later date after this signal has been process to review and inquiry.”

I’m not sure if it does that or not, but I’m going to assume it does, because the endless pages of how I expanded into forever suddenly started going haywire. Where once a chapter detailed my miserable time trying to impress an older woman, now it only said “I was dinosaurs, please have fun with omelets.”

It broke down a lot more, and eventually lost even its tone of nonsense, and just became a blank book that somehow evoked only feeling and this strange sense of loss and confusion.

Whatever was left, wasn’t dedicated to me, but rather what I had to live within. Thankfully, that wasn’t filed under regret. The world I had to inhabit previous to this was a mess, and the people that flooded it were very troublesome. I don’t think the universe will miss them, or me. But again, it won’t even remember us as even that remote spec, because we will never be, never were. It is at this point that I am wondering how long the process will take, because I’ve expanded myself into an infinite, but once I reach that far I can’t see of myself, for myself, so gauging the time span on when this will all happen, (even though it already has happened) is quite tricky. That, and I’m still more interested in how this manual keeps giving me different meanings and translations on what the button does.

End result is the same, but the process to create that same result is different every time.

Oh, look… genesis, exodus, rebirth, and death… they’re all shaking hands. I’m glad something good came from all of this. As for the rest of you? Well… my bad.

Outside basking in moonlight, far from evils and cares, it’s oh so tired there, many faces went to lie down, while many others went to run. Simple and quiet now, the tide will wash over the loamy earth. I won’t look back. A face in the dark sky, smiling with starlight, the bugs and birds whisper, and the wind cools and offers great comforts.

Alone in the moonlight, a simple dancer meant for daylight persists. Alone in the dark sky, symbols in stars tell of maternity and fortune. Faces vanish calm, and look down to all the sleep. Time will slow, down on that earth below. Another day rolls past; simple may never have such grasp. Another day below, another day they go.

Outside in the quiet sky, I ask them of possible flight. Alone in my clear mind, see them in sight soon. Time stomps like an angered child, it makes me miss many things I once thought were worth my interest. I of me and them to they, the questions removed and tranquility reigns in their gaze.

Morals and noisy things, sleep in their empty thoughts, clouds covering light, moving with much haste. Damp grass clings to my heels, a refreshing gaze enshrouds me.

Time will sink, into the rising tide deep, it will sulk and walk away, and we will meet again sometime soon.

My hands are covering a cloth, running from awake to dream. My mind trails alongside of it, stretching endlessly. It’s oh so quiet here, lost in the glowing light. Tempered minds rejoice, contemplation and bodies rest. A side of my world rests, burning less hastily, they trample their minds aloft, unknowing of what they seek.

Among all things slow, a tranquil earth sits below, images gracefully shine, and they won’t look back, like I won’t look back.

Outfacing the greatest threats, whispers of dark intent, blinded by lunar things, kinder words offered me. Flickering brightly gone, the first signs of dawn. Another day moves past, the tide does not engulf me. Another day brings end, just for the night to be sent. Time will slow, again whispering to the earth below. All will rest, another day passing from regret.

It’s oh so quiet here, I wish it could stay that way. Outshined by simple lights, faces that see the past me. The stories they’ve told, to so many simple minds below, an inspiration strikes mind, as another night passes me.

I would see it there, the faces that touch the sky. Birthing a new night, one that shines just as bright. A cradle of mind, an infancy yet to pass. I reach for them slow, mind and hand not in sync. It’s oh so quiet here, time has relinquished its aims. Outside in the moon’s glow, another night fades from me.

Blue skies dance in the mirror, gently nudging you forward as the day progresses in a slightly dull time scale. Green grass grows around your feet, nurturing your disposition and making your path easy to traverse. Soft winds lap at your hair and skin, making you smile as they whisper to you.

But you’re not here. The path that was easy to walk, comfortable, enjoyable. It was taken from me, and given to you. You, and only ever you.

I’ve dreamed, lord how I’ve dreamed. I’ve seen the world without you, and without me. I’ve seen the stars dance amongst an inky stillness as they slowly forgot our names. The virgin full moon birthed again into a still sky, ignorant of what it shone upon… and rightfully so.

My path carried sand and dust. The cracked pavement that rolls forward before me traces a map of the land that speaks of the figures that watch over us in the skies. I wandered a lonely nothingness, music covering my ears as I tried to dream those things I used to dream, and pull forth from the back of my mind the images I wished to see again.

I saw the city coming for me. At first as I turned to look over my shoulder, I saw an outline. But soon the horizon grew dark and bare. The light emitting from ourselves blotted out the night sky, and the figures who danced so carelessly in the stars.

Each day I’m running away further, but I’m never going anywhere.

Each day I’m shoving myself further down the line. I remember the voices, and the smells.

The old friends I see no more, and the dreams I carried for them. At the bedside of one, with promises I could never keep, and smiles I would never shed.

But they pale in comparison to you.

The city consumed me. The maw opened wide, and now I listen to this music, not for my own whimsy, but to blot out the noises of traffic jams and petty squabbles.

You walked in a moon kissed loam, still damp as the sun rose gently over it. You dreamed of ripe fruit and lazy afternoons by the creek we once shared. Now I dream of economics and the still nothingness that industry brings with it.

The path you stood on was gifted to you, with ease and splendor, so that a face like mine was easy to forget. I soon learned that my dreams were things I needed to fight for, kill for. The city consumed me, and with it, my dreams. The effort I exerted was washed away by pointless noise, complexity that only masked simplicity, and illnesses with no cure.

The path we walked was one in the same, so why is it that I was consumed, while you escaped? I dream of noise, and wonder where they went… those figures in the sky.

Their gaze was a reassuring one, and their tone was stern. I feel as though I’m deep within a cave, sharing my company with a great beast that is all too eager to feed on anything.

I would scream, but it wouldn’t bring you back. Those faces I took so much comfort in have left me here by the wayside, and I am always left dreaming. The eyes appear, as do the words, but the smiles and songs now blur into nothing.

You stood beside me, and the world you occupied was everything I ever wanted, the places and sights. Just beside me as time shifted effortless forwards and backwards, I could reach, but I would never find my target. I could shout, but never be heard.

I travel in a stream of time filled with egotistical prophets speaking with forked tongues and dual intentions. A subversive people pensive for the wrong reasons, and never looking behind them. It haunts my ears and eyes, like the fallen heroes we oft dream of slaughtering. Cast down before their creators.

You are there beside me, but I cannot see you.

As the insanity of the world claims me, you are still there, dreaming of friendly places, people. Smoke chokes the skies, and I am left wanting to see once more, the figures that used to dace above us. A snow capped haunted place, full of people that refuse to acknowledge one another.

Smiles transposed over buildings, but with slogans behind them.

We are sensitive to our rise, to our good byes, but in between, we are lost.

I am lost…

And you are not here. That face I dreamed of… I created it. Those places I envisioned, I dreamed of them. The hopes I carried, we only my own. I walked with them forever in time, transfixed on that which I was never a part of, dreaming of finding ways into places that never existed. Until we all find out where we are in this bleak place, until we each of us find a way back home. The sun is blotted out, the moon’s glow is unwavering and still, yet here we are ignorant of any of it.

The taxed minds seek refuge in that which they know not of, the foolish are all asleep, peacefully set in their ways. I would lie awake at night and think of you, seeking scenarios of my own doing. Lost amongst my thoughts, blind among my dreams, and I would give them all away to you.

Bound now, to this place, I sit in time and dream of you. Beside me in my thoughts, captivating in my dreams, until I pass from here, and into the sky, where I will dance once more with those that watched over me. Until I find that thing I wanted to call home, be it a dream or fiction or a place long lost. The ruins of my past, the fragments of this city, and each of them crowd the road.

I would shout… but I’m standing here amongst an empty road rolling out in front of me, covering the sand and dust. You are in a field that rests next to a creek that we used to call our own. The grass guides you, the sand welcomes me. The wind whispers to you, while it pushes me away. You’re not here, so to the things that enthralled my thoughts I go…

And nothing more.

Everything’s for sale. Nothing is sacred. The price of innocence and the corruption of purity should be held as arguments against their very existence. But vanity in greed, those are always in high demand. Pride, envy, lust, anger… such are the things that drive economics.

Want what you’ll never need, withhold from those that do. Status, every man, woman, and child on their own. Forsaken amongst a few, for something that isn’t theirs. It doesn’t belong to anyone, really.

Status, image cast amongst the lot of those always left wanting, a hunger they can never feed. Like a parasite, gnawing at the flesh, licking at the bones, constantly craving more, unaware of how terrible the construct has become.

Statue, temple, church, whatever the words are the meaning is always the same, the values taught as means of control mechanisms, instilled amongst the youth, who are ever burdened with the mistakes of the old. Iteration breeds change like anything else, but at a far slower pace.

Mistakes, double takes, a fake smile, the false hope inspired by an insipid need for self preservation at the cost of others. All things turn to competition, and when such happens, everyone loses.

Pick it up, don’t drop it, or it doesn’t belong to you. Did it ever, and why?

Smile and nod, sing and dance, ignore that which causes dismay. The true intentions of good and evil are sold to the public as differing measures of controlled morality. The only true good that could exist, doesn’t. The true evil, is not malicious deeds… it is the willful acceptance of ignorance. Cover your ears and close your eyes. Act like it’s all not there, that god will save you. He will punish all other heathens, those that do not ascribe to your policies, he will burn those you hated, and he will judge you forever.

The Earth is still flat. Smile and nod, sing and dance. March in line, single file, eyes to the floor. Never dare ask questions.

To ask is to dream, to dream is to hope, and to hope, is to be foolish. Act only as the men behind the barred curtain say to, dare not ask of the universe, for it will not provide for you.

Look in the mirror, use your favorite products to mask yourself in the image popularized by today’s magazines and television programs. Remember that they teach nothing of self worth or value, they sell it, so you sell it too.

When you find a person you deem worthy, remember not statistics on marriage or divorce rates, but remember only of the things you consume, and what they say of personal connections. Your network is tied to your network connection, and your mind and body belong to the advertisers that finance both, ever the hamster on the wheel.

Remember when you see that person, that you’re just trying to sell yourself. Your ideas, your hopes, your dreams… your image. What you personally deem of worth to give back, after all the time you’ve spent wanting more.

Sell it, and never ask questions.

Never ask… never say to yourself “what was it worth?” You’re are always who you are, and in spite of all your wanting, all your envy and greed, you’re still going to be the same, and you’re still going to die. You’ll walk the lines they walk, you’ll say the things they said, and always be left wanting more.

Let your eyes be cast at the floor, let your mind and body be theirs. Give everything of who and what you are to those who have nothing their selves. Give it all away… because you wanted everything.

If your smile is bright enough though… if your words carry enough weight… you can still sell it.

I sat on the shore and watched the new dawn rise. A quarter past three AM, and lights erupted in the sky. First it was five, then it was twelve, and then it was so bright I could no longer see.

The first thing I thought about was carrying you here, at least, what was left of you.

This could have been so different, had only we allowed it to be.

Bickering turned to yelling, yelling turned to anger, and anger turned to violence. I raised my hand at you but once, and I knew it would be the only time such would happen. The regret that clouds my movements speaks of how to alter my steps, tells me not to make this happen again. While in my head, there’s some strange tidal pull to throw me back into the things I know I should avoid.

You’re not with me, so looking at your face only makes it hurt that much more. I would whisper into your ear, to see the lights before us. Soon they will take me, but you will remain here… at least, what’s left of you.

My eyes missing out on some important detail, something inside them telling me to dart about randomly as the lights erupt more and more, multiplying in the early morning sky. Maybe I just can’t stand to look at you?

I drop you and huddle on the ground, thinking to myself: How could this be the real world?

Perception is powerful, but limited in scope. The things we promise ourselves and those around us differ to such varied degrees. Reality isn’t perception, but if so, then what’s the truth that I’ve been missing?

This can’t be the reality. I remember so much of how I was to you, thinking I was only ever kind and compassionate. How does something like this happen, when my memories tell me that my failed perception is reality?

Just as soon as I stand along the shore and the tide laps at my feet, I feel the things I know I feel, and the sensation that it’s all real… but this can’t be reality.

I want to see that I carried you here on my back, while you laughed all along, just as though summers past, when this place would hide us from the world. I want to see that your hands, are still inching closer to mine, just like every night as I slept.

But what I see, is you there, lying so cold and unaware, ignorant of the brilliance that has taken over the sky.

What I see is not what I have made… In truth what I’ve made is what I’ve seen. Carve you out of sand, and watch you crumble in my hands, screaming to myself that it’s all the way it should be. Just as the events have set the sky into brilliant light, the only world I am afforded is the same one that all others occupy. No concessions are made to me, and my judgment still awaits me, for what I’ve done. The actions that I took, that brought you here in such a state, and my mind is spinning with too much burden and hate.

This can be reality, but only if I choose.

This can be nothing, but only if I close my eyes.

This can be everything, but not for me.

This is the world I’ve known, and it’s never going away.