Note: This was dashed off without the intent of being a blog post, but I thought—in keeping with the prompt for this week—that I could step out of my comfort zone and share it anyway. I'm still in the honeymoon phase in which I think this is brilliant and beautiful, so if it's incoherent I apologize.
I am the all-consuming well of life. I am the chasm waiting to swallow the innocent and destroy them. I am empty, cold, unfeeling. I am ravenous and I am infinitely patient.
You are the child stumbling around, ready to fall in at any moment and be swallowed up to fall for years and years, the light growing dimmer as time passes in a rush. You will forget the faces of your parents, the name of your dog, the sun. You will forget all this and scrape at the passing walls, clawing off chunks of mortar and trying to fit them together, demented into believing they are a puzzle for you to solve, that they can provide some meaning. You will learn to live this life wholeheartedly, bumping into people along the way, spending some time with them before you drift apart. You’ll distract yourself with them and with your jagged puzzle pieces, never quite realizing what you’re missing. And then you will hit the water.
Suddenly you’ll be drowning, drawing water through your lungs, experiencing the suffocating grasp of its slender arms. But in that moment of clarity and dread, you won’t long for the life you know. The chunks of stone will fall from your hands, a life’s work scattered and irreplaceable, and you’ll feel nothing. You’ll remember, suddenly, the smell of the grass, the feeling of the warm sunlight on your back. And as your vision fades to black your last sight will be that infinitesimal speck at the top, growing once again until it encompasses your field of view and swallows you whole. You’ll feel like you’re flying, reversing that sinking sensation that’s stuck with you since the fateful fall.
And you’ll be home again. You’ll hear your parents’ voices asking if you’re okay, asking what happened. “I fell down,” you’ll say. Maybe you’ll start to cry. They’ll comfort you, find a bandage for your skinned knee and your cut palms, and carry you back inside. You’ve already started to forget that dreamlike time when you were falling through the darkness. The scars from clinging so tight to those sharp, cold rocks remain in your hands, but you’re home. You’re safe. You are a child in the arms of a mother. Your whole life, warm and full and bright, lies ahead. And right now it’s time for dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment