The Cage of the Sun
It has been precisely one week, three days and seventeen hours since my daughter has died. Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the clock hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in erratic staggers and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for someone as insignificant as me. But now I feel my time has come: I must leave this world in exactly the same way as my daughter did.
Lately the grief had been torture. I had kept her room as a shrine, sleeping on the floor by her bed each and every night. I still remember when I realised her scent was leaving; the pain was nauseating, but strangely numbing. Almost as if I had received a heavy dose of anaesthetic, consciousness had slipped away and I had lost all reason since. My head, which had once been filled with such exquisite flowers and sweet laughter, was now a barren land: cast away and restricted for dreamless slumbers.
I took a lungful of air and looked up now to see the pylon that seemed to dictate and govern the bottle green landscape; like a forbidding parent to a small child. I felt the rough bracken beneath my knees, and then the palms of my hands, and then it was pressed against the unshaven skin of my cheek. I hoped that I was fainting, but to my disappointment I didn’t lose consciousness. The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before, now reared up high and washed over my head. I felt as if I was being dragged down by a hook in my heart which would explain the pain there. I lifted my arms upwards above my head as if the throbbing agony could escape through my fingertips, like bolts of electricity. Then I dropped them and scrambled to my feet. I was a coward. Pathetic. It was as if I was so dependent on pain that losing it would mean losing her, but I had to do it.
I took one stride, inhaled, took another one and another until I was throwing myself forward. Running past a torrent of trees- a dark green haze; until I reached the opening into the field. I ran further still. My heart palpitated in my skull; and the memories infested my head as the wind blew violently at my face; forbidding me of the treachery ahead, but I fought against it. Her face, her smile, her laugh, the soft brown curls that framed her face and emerald green eyes. All those precious moments that I took so for granted, and the way she used to grin at me, to acknowledge the understanding we shared as father and daughter. Oh, god i missed her!
Then I halted for an endless instant and I stood, gaping at the immense towering cage that stood before me, mocking me. I sought through my being, searching for something that would give me enough strength. A memory that made me so happy that I could take my life away, while thinking about it. Could such a memory exist for anyone?
After a few seconds it flooded into my mind like a crack of sunlight. I beamed, took a step forwards and climbed up onto the diamond shaped strusts. The shimmering wire of the pylon dancing in the heavens. However, as I climbed up further and further I distinguished a dark blur of the enraged thrashing storm that was hammering ever closer towards me with every pulsation of blood that thudded from my hearts chambers. I pulled all my thoughts towards the memory and I began to laugh, uncontrollable hilarity shaking through me, I was in hysterics. It made me feel emancipated and free, to laugh in the face of certain death.
I saw an abrupt flash of black in the corner of my eye. I twisted my body whilst clinging to the wire; I saw a dark shadow fixed to the ground, a black cloak thrilling in the wind. I felt a pang of shock as realisation of what I was doing really hit me. I fought for the memory again searching though my already ravaged soul for the slightest allusion of hope; I found it and clung to the remembrance of her because it was the only thing left. I looked up to the sky and saw the cloud was nearly ready to strike- my day was nearly done.
“It’s okay, I’m doing this for her”, I hollered to the strange silhouette, I wasn’t sure whether they heard me but I didn’t have enough energy to shout again. “Goodnight my darling”, I whispered into the air.
A vast flash overcame me and I knew I was nearly there. The pain was incomprehensible. I was mystified. I couldn’t make sense of how I could feel such torture and still be alive. I tried to deny the pain, and I was heaved again and again into a gloom that hacked out whole seconds of the agony, making it that much more demanding to keep up with reality. I didn’t know which one to fight for, reality or unconsciousness. Unconsciousness didn’t hurt but was black and terrifying, yet reality felt like what I would imagine being submerged in acid would feel like. And yet i knew, there was something so much more than this torture but what it was; had left my mind: I was encapsulated in ever growing pain. Consciousness had come on so fast. I don't want to die. I don't want to die!
I was aware of the ripping agony that was now killing me slowly. I could feel sharp yanks in gravities direction but I refused to let go of the bar I was clutching at like a fool. I could hear quick snaps as my body convulsed maniacally, pieces of me shattering. My legs thrashed in the air as they lost their footing. The burning grew- rose and peaked until it surpassed anything I had ever felt. I tried to feel my heart- to find it but I was so lost inside my own body I couldn’t feel things I should: nothing felt in the right place. The pain was so excruciatingly real all I wanted to do was to die. To have never been born. The whole of my existence and the reason I has lost to be here did nolt outweigh this- could not counteract for it. Wasn’t worth living through it for one more heartbeat. Let me die, let me die. And for a never ending space, that was all there was. Just the fiery torture, and my soundless shrieks, pleading for death to come quickly. One seemingly infinite moment of nothingness. My body dislocated itself from time and space as I free fell through the air- not yet reaching the light. Just before I hit the ground I saw the stranger- it was her.
Treading a field I saw afar
A laughing fellow climbing the cage
That held the grinning tensions of wire,
Alone, and no girl gave him courage.
Up he climbed on the diamond struts,
Diamond cut diamond, till he stood
With the insulators brooding like owls
And all their live wisdom, if he would.
I called to him climbing and asked him to say
What thrust him into the singeing sky:
The one word he told me the wind took away,
So I shouted again, but the wind passed me by
And the gust of his answer tore at his coat
And stuck him stark on the lightning’s bough;
Humanity screeched in his manacled throat
And he cracked with flame like a figure of straw.
Turning, burning, he dangled black,
A hot sun swallowing at his fork
And shaking embers out of his back,
Planting his shadow of fear in the chalk.
O then he danced an incredible dance
With soot in his sockets, hanging at heels;
Uprooted mandrakes screamed in his loins,
His legs thrashed and lashed like electric eels;
For now he embraced the talent of iron,
The white-hot ore that comes from the hill,
The Word out of which the electrons run,
The snake in the rod and the miracle;
And as he embraced it the girders turned black,
Fused metal wept and great tears ran down
Till his fingers like snails at last came unstuck
And he fell through the cage of the sun.
