— Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain
I play Bon Iver and hear haunting voices of Fall Creek choir. Silk grazes my knees and I tread lightly, with warm feet on cold tiles, into night.
The black ink moves slowly, undulating with the same rhythm as a heartbeat - which would go to explain why, at our most inner core, we're drawn with an ancient aching to an icy ending. I can see my breath. It evaporates into miles of nothingness, a part of me part of something else. How can something be so peaceful but so terrifying at the same time. With the power to heal, but beckons warm bodies with sweeping swords - promising the gentility of a fork lit dip. Unforgiving and fierce under a velvet sky.
Drunk with temptation and longing, stung with the salt of a thousand mountain ranges - birthed from so many foreign roads. Reflecting Alaskan wild nights that bring back childhood memories of lanterns in caves. So many lanterns.
The air is still and silent - relinquished from the faint smell of violence that taunts waking hours under the sun's watch. And with the sun gone, the moon. Oh. The moon. With weary fingertips reaching toward her, I think of African nights where she was doubled in size. A globe of light that our ancestors would have worshiped - and I see it too - so clearly like it's the only thing that makes sense right now. And really, it is. I live in moments of existing - an internal monologue racing in this tiny space of a body. So many unknown knowns that my mind hides in the night's skies above. The only thing I'm sure of in this moment is that in a previous life, I would have been a bird.
The black ink moves slowly, undulating with the same rhythm as a heartbeat - which would go to explain why, at our most inner core, we're drawn with an ancient aching to an icy ending. I can see my breath. It evaporates into miles of nothingness, a part of me part of something else. How can something be so peaceful but so terrifying at the same time. With the power to heal, but beckons warm bodies with sweeping swords - promising the gentility of a fork lit dip. Unforgiving and fierce under a velvet sky.
Drunk with temptation and longing, stung with the salt of a thousand mountain ranges - birthed from so many foreign roads. Reflecting Alaskan wild nights that bring back childhood memories of lanterns in caves. So many lanterns.
Walking down unconscious to reality, insanity bleeds clots into my mind with every step, speeding and pacing faster until my feet become clumsy underneath me and I break into running. Running to something I'm not sure exists. Coherent humming, in harmony. Running for something I still can't see. Consumed by the devil in the form of the sea. I can taste the metallic madness - poisoning my throat and piercing through my lungs. Ice cold and malicious, but addictive.
And that's it.
The air is still and silent - relinquished from the faint smell of violence that taunts waking hours under the sun's watch. And with the sun gone, the moon. Oh. The moon. With weary fingertips reaching toward her, I think of African nights where she was doubled in size. A globe of light that our ancestors would have worshiped - and I see it too - so clearly like it's the only thing that makes sense right now. And really, it is. I live in moments of existing - an internal monologue racing in this tiny space of a body. So many unknown knowns that my mind hides in the night's skies above. The only thing I'm sure of in this moment is that in a previous life, I would have been a bird.
I feel my heartbeat in my fingertips, the throb of dopamine moving through receptors and if the devil existed; if the devil existed tangibly - he was here inside my chest in this moment. I watch the waves grow more fierce - reclining back in the same rhythm it was cursed with. This endless rhythm that pulls the sky and centers gravity and even stirs the blood inside us to a constant metronome.
I can feel it pull me in, beckoning softly, and it is as sweet as I imagined - if not more. As the ink swells, I succumb and let it wash over me. Wholly, completely. Consuming my soul. In that moment it feels like nothing will ever be this beautiful again. I feel the darkness smudge off like a faint stain, dissolving into the surrounding blackness. Why is it that mundane places are so extraordinary by night? I have to go. I feel euphoria slipping, as much as I beat at it relentlessly to stay inside me. But I feel lighter from darkness - darkness that I've left in an ocean that will inevitably wash it back to those Alaskan mountains. And, in time, they will spread harmlessly over another coming to lay their burden. With every breath, it leaves me; sweet parting like the first high you spend a lifetime trying to catch. But like the kissing of the waves to the sand, and the pale glow of the moon, I know my darkness gets heavy I can come back to those icy black sheets and sleep soundly again.
