Eternity

Sorry for all the dark pieces lately. Second to last one, I promise.

I step blindly forward. I see only my feet. I know only now.

I cannot see behind me as I head forward, that which passed passing into the oblivion blocked by my skull. I cannot see it, I cannot know it, it cannot exist in me.

I cannot see before me where my feet plod on. The blows of my own thoughts force my head down. The path in front of me simply existing as slides into my view, as it throws itself under my circling feet. As it becomes my here and now, even as it is becoming my past. It does not exist as a future. I do not exist in a future.

I recognize only the reality pressing in upon me now: the sloping ground, the biting wind, the dimming light. All else, all past or future, blackness. No reflection of my singular light of being hits my brain. Nothing hits the light. Nothing. Only the here and now. There is no hereafter.

And yet, as level sod pass my void eyes as if they only ever had, as utter stillness caresses my skin as if it only ever had, I see, I feel another time. Deep in the recesses of my body, pain. And not that pain of lifelessness. I feel a tensed brow, that I no longer wear. I feel a ventilator draft that no longer blows. I see the face of my brother who no longer laughs.

And he lifts my eyes to meet the marble marred lawn, to face the rising sun, to acknowledge eternity.

Rushing Whispers

The voices in my head. The voices in my world. The voices trying to get there. How can I hear the difference between the sound waves. They wash through my brain, eroding what I knew. How can I see through the waves?

So many currents, pulling me apart, pounding on my mind, till I fall to pebbles. No foundation. No granite base. Just sand washing with the water, waves upon waves upon waves upon me. And who am I? What defines me? The voice in my mind, the voice in my family, the voice in my friends, the voice in my school, they build to the rushing roar, drown thought in their glistening depths, dissolve me in their monotone diversity.

I sink.

And I rise.

What breaks the surface, the mirrored veil keeping me under the waves? What glorious silence breaks the screams and wraps me in its peace? What grounds me, and from this firm foundation lifts me above the waters, the whispering voices, above myself? Or who?