I set the bridges alight, watched them burn, and smiled with self-satisfaction as I attempted to make an island of a man. Oily, black smoke, underwritten by flaming
lathes, rose from the hulking spans that tied me, as island, to other places –
to other people – as the sun set behind them.
Night fell and the flames roared against the darkness, the stars were
blotted out by soot. Darkness cradled me
and made me feel, if not whole, somewhat more complete. I had hearkened to Mill, but I had ignored
that learned, self-loathing Prussian; I had gazed long into the abyss, that the
abyss knew me as its own. All that
remained was the trudge toward doom – my mind’s war long gone silent. The mental larks, still bravely singing, flew
– now oft heard amid scarce guns below.
I became as a husk – mind full of screaming thoughts, with
empty eyes and stoic face. I cut deeper,
and deeper still. I waxed poetic and
bled metaphoric within the prison of my skull.
I began to emulate others in public as I drew deeper into myself. When noticed, I was as emulator, not as
husk. Pride grew around my hidden
emptiness, and I drew deeper still into myself.
I repelled the reaching minds of others as though boats of invaders:
this was my grim sanctuary; this was my waste land; this was the death I had
sought for more than a decade, hidden within life itself – a clever alternative
to suicide; my precious mystery wrapped in an enigma, choked with ash.
Fear was a constant. Fear
of myself, fear of being exposed, fear of failure. Fear of the ubiquitous “you.” And there was also fear of the literal You.
You began existing while the walls were becoming
fortified and the onslaught from outside raged hardest. You appeared as lightning – a
fury entirely separate from the winter storm at hand. I did not think that You were important: I knew
that You were important, as I knew I feared You. Your bright flash of a smile somehow reached
me: it pierced through the terror and the tarnish and laid hands on my mental
self. I ran. I hid.
I cowered, ashamed.
Work continued on my captivity; more walls were erected, wave
breaks were installed to ward out further incursion, tunnels and warrens were
excavated in order to better hide from the insufferable, intolerable state that
is life. But You would speak my name,
loud as a thunderclap, and I would rush to the battlements to see who dared
taint my cloister. The raven-haired
tempest would acknowledge my existence as it passed my island by. This disturbed me: that You could see me,
could even call out to me and make me hear You; that I could not hide from You.
But what most abhorred me was what happened as the months passed by.
I came to enjoy the squall’s – Your – traversals. I began to look forward to seeing the deep, dark amber of Your eyes and Your luminous smile. I built
structures and modified behavior specifically to move myself into Your path
more often. You have slowly built a
bridge of Your own, wrapped in Your beautiful cacophony of mist and movement. I have been wary, but I have allowed it – I have
not torn it asunder or twisted it away: I let you build, and perhaps even
helped guide your graceful, perfect hands; hands the color of creamed coffee. I do not know who I have become, to lament
over days without contact; to grow sullen regarding times when I do not see
progress upon the structure. And, yet, I
yearn for contact with Your outside world.
I want to bask in the friendly rain of Your typhoon; I wish to feel the
pressure of Your gales and the concussion of Your thunder; I need to dare Your
lightning.
A favorite literary character of mine would say that the
world has moved on, and also that ka – fate – is a wheel. Mayhap the world has moved on around me;
mayhap the world is moving me along with it; and mayhap – just perhaps – it isn’t
for the worse this time. Come what may,
it can maybe be made as brightly magnificent as my abysmal asylum has been dark.
“’We all die in time.’ the gunslinger said. ‘It’s not just
the world that moves on.’ He looked squarely at Eddie, his faded blue eyes
almost the color of slate in this light. ‘But we will be magnificent.’” – The Drawing of the Three
