in pitch black

as a child the sun reaches out to you with all its splendour, and you happily give it your heart. it envelops your entire being and seeps into your soul. it gives you warmth and colour and shows you infinite forests and hills: all yours, all yours to explore. but as you step towards the grass a thistle pricks your shin. deceptive. it had a purple flower. with every step you find hurt in all places: love leaves lacerations and razor slits, rules followed leave a stone in your chest, rules broken a knot in your gut. you learn to dodge, skilfully, expertly. but the bees and the thorns still catch you at every turn. halfway through the first paddy you are panting, broken, sick. you are slowly bleeding out. by the time you are thirty, emerging from the fields to mount the curb of a busy road, you are barely recognisable to those who held you as a baby, your face too full of cuts, the bags under your eyes weighing down your entire being. the sun still beckons beyond the horizon, its arms wide, patient, kind. but you can’t bring yourself to trust it. you think it demonic: only cruel lies behind those eyes.

was I ever happy before? happiness is a big word: a light warmth that wraps around you on a frosty day. am I happy? perhaps I was never meant to be. perhaps melancholy is my state of being, and I was never, never meant to creep above the clouds to achieve clarity and purity of light. perhaps I was meant to dwell below with the soil and the rocks and the quiet stream.

today, in a pitch-dark tent, my heart burst, and out flowed rivers. it made me realise why I had felt so little before: there was no space in that cavity with all those tears. perhaps what I need to do is cry, and cry, and cry. but what lies at the end of all this water? does anything lie at the end? or what cavern will I find?