05-18-2021, 10:10 PM
kensley
i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
It had happened in the night and when he woke the next morning he’d thought himself waking in a dream. Because, as he’d slept, the fog had crept in and replaced his skin. Because an early spring rain had begun to fall and it stopped when he willed it away. And when he’d clambered to his feet and exhaled a startled sigh, the breath that had left him had been enough to disturb the grass at his feet.
But it was no dream.
He had awoken something other.
And his head swims now with the overwhelming way things have changed and how he has lost sight of the penance he was meant to pay. The yoke he had been meant to carry. The guilt has carved itself a home in the walls of his chest but it has become so familiar that it is comfortable now. It no longer holds the same weight it once did. It no longer feels like a vise tightened around his windpipe.
He has been distracted.
And this is no different.
How he had ached simply to be alive. How painful it had been to come back from the dead! And this! This seizes him with panic because there is no explanation for it. His chest heaves with all that panic as he stumbles along the riverbank. The body still moves the same, though this does not seem possible.
“Will you touch me?” he asks the first soul he encounters. Such a strange request, but there is a kind of desperation in the voice, an urgency in the dark eyes. “Will you tell me if I’m real?”
But it was no dream.
He had awoken something other.
And his head swims now with the overwhelming way things have changed and how he has lost sight of the penance he was meant to pay. The yoke he had been meant to carry. The guilt has carved itself a home in the walls of his chest but it has become so familiar that it is comfortable now. It no longer holds the same weight it once did. It no longer feels like a vise tightened around his windpipe.
He has been distracted.
And this is no different.
How he had ached simply to be alive. How painful it had been to come back from the dead! And this! This seizes him with panic because there is no explanation for it. His chest heaves with all that panic as he stumbles along the riverbank. The body still moves the same, though this does not seem possible.
“Will you touch me?” he asks the first soul he encounters. Such a strange request, but there is a kind of desperation in the voice, an urgency in the dark eyes. “Will you tell me if I’m real?”
i worshipped at the altar of losing everything