There Is Nothing Left To Lose
The wind howled against my window that night and fell to the pane below it. The air behind it was calm like the stagnant beast, ominous to the ignorant. Seeing its short temper I remained as quiet as I could. Outside my window was nothing but tension hanging in the air, threatening my sleep. I was awake anyway so I cared not. The room I call home was large and empty even though it felt cluttered with my many unrecognized thoughts, scattered about like remnants of an explosion in an already abandoned factory. I felt the need to escape but knew I would only find another place like this, only more alien and uninviting. This place was almost a friend in my times of self doubt. It served as a sanctuary when I needed solitude from restlessness that I felt outside. As I sat there in my fortress of loneliness and joy, I felt a tapping at my window. Scared, I remained in the security of my bed. Tap. Again it sounded. Not wanting to know what might be there I fell into my imagination. Wild images of unknown fears and my own insecurities took over. Tap-tap-tap. It wasn’t going to leave me in peace. I gathered up my courage and forced my numb self to stand up. Pushing across the curtains I found my staring into an unknown figure. Draped in white and shining through enveloping darkness there stood beauty personified. Hair of sable and deep brown eyes, like puddles of mud molded into desirable statues of unrivalled splendor. She beckoned me to join her under the night sky on this night of eloquence. Reluctantly I followed.
We left my house and street behind as we ran away from the familiar, all the while smiling at each other like we had known each other for many years, it almost felt like we did. We ran down the road where it curved into the valley and drifted slowly outward into a misery of curves and lines and unknown paths. Feeling that there was no need to run anymore, we slowed to a pleasant walk amongst the forest that covered the valley in shades of emerald and auburn and there we carved our names the flesh of the earth. We halted under a large tree that stood alone and proud on top of a hill, sheltering us from the fears that were thrown down from the sky. Fear was gone. It was replaced by a joyful feeling that there was nothing left to lose. As we stood, alone, gazing into our own desires, falling into what we knew to be alleviating, we saw that neither of us were going back into depression without being weathered and corroded down to our bones. This would only cause sorrow for me though, not her. She didn’t carry the burdens of humanity. She was the untouchable.
Lying on the hillside awaiting the sunrise, she spoke of the moon as if it were her closest friend. “Darkness is merely a veil for one with no need to express their happiness,” she said, trying to teach me about myself. I believed every single word she uttered through her mouth that made me feel empathy for the dumb. “Why is life only a support of death?” I asked in awe of her knowledge. “Like the morning sun in the shadow of its fall, life will be a support for death until it finds its independence from it. Do not ask to be spared when your time comes, for you will only find disappointment in what you are granted.” Her answer was like centuries of literature and philosophy rolled into a single proclamation of reality. All of a sudden I felt content with mortality and everything it entails. Silence fell once again as the sun began to rise over the lonely hilltops that formed the horizon.
Like an ethereal body of radiance, the sun cast light upon the world. Sunrise had never seemed so beautiful. As the light ran up the side of the hill like a messenger delivering the new day, her image grew thinner. She was fading. I knew it would come to this but somehow I ignored it. The look of sorrow on her face had washed away the warming smile I loved so, a pantomime of regret acted out with silence. On top of that hill, under that tree, we embraced like estranged lovers cast adrift years before and only just being reunited. As she became more transparent with every second and every new beam of light, my thoughts strayed to the night before. My joy, my first smile in what felt like ages, my feeling of ecstasy. This was the end of this dream lined with reality. As a tear escaped one of her deep-set eyes, she uttered the words, “Live, it is the way to salvation.” With that she was gone.
I was left alone in my pool of self doubt, drowning in it. Asphyxiation of the heart took hold and was about to take away my last breath when I remembered her words, “Live, it is the way to salvation.” I knew she was right and decided to fight the suffocation in my chest. It felt like acid was flowing through my already decaying veins but the thought of her kept me alive. Cold sweat dripping from my forehead, the taste of copper in my mouth. Then all in one moment I felt totally healed for some reason. I sat up and felt an eerie presence behind me. I turned around and saw nothing but faintly I heard an angelic voice, speaking no words but offering reassurance, I knew she saved me. Feeling disheartened but thankful, I sat on the hillside for many hours, pondering her wisdom, remembering my joy, thinking of the night before.
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