There are cages without doors. There are fences cutting endlessly into the sky with no dirt to dig underneath it. There are trees without leaves in forests I have never seen! In the deepest oceans I am eaten by beasts with thousands of teeth and bears fish me out of water. I fly with Icarus, and he falls and I remain. I fly with dragons, and they burn me and I remain. I walk on coals and through swarms of hornets. And I remain. There are homes with no windows. There are hollow families and one of them walks through a glass door; I am full of shards stuck between the fractures of my wooden vessel.
Now there is one place where only two may feel. The one who remains and she who walks in the glass toward me. There Is only a window that I can crawl through to run away from her because I fear the death of something beyond me which has morphed into a part of myself and made a home inside my shaking ribs.
Those are the hands that play the keys of a piano that may never reach anyone at all. One which the puppet master casts into shadows because what is played is honest and not bound by their strict lines. There are no right notes to play but those which are ugly and raw.
So, I resort to rash verses, not always with grace and all a bit impulsive. I resort to myths and metaphors to define a reality which we only pretend to know. A reality which is fluid and never sleeping, waiting eagerly to sneak up behind you. I resort to dreams of other places with myself and the glass-walker. I dream of a reality where I am a warrior against beasts which are, in actuality, shards of myself and I relax when words tangle and jumble out of line.
We are drowned in the pressure of making sense and maintaining normalcy. "It must all be in order! It must all line up straight!" We are taught that to break free of these shackles is just as to toss ourselves onto our own blades. We are shown that learning a trade is not as important to our peers as learning to be obedient dogs to those who choose to beat us.
I am joyfully embraced in the glass bitten hands that I hold gingerly and kiss. I feel best in places that change and move. I am alive when they tell I shalt not have survived! Inconsistency and immaturity must have buried me by now! What of me now? Do I seem to be ebbing away from this life? Do I look dusted in dirt from my own grave so soon?
Do you?
I care not for the fool who condemns us so. I fear not the grave I will someday fill. I am deathly afraid of not earning my place there in the earth. This gift of life, the perception of reality, is a force like no mortal being could ever grasp or catch glimpse of. It is paradoxical that we are graced with it and it is maddening to punish ourselves and each other for it.
These hands play silent violins in woken dreams watching some other dimension do the same and break into sound. These pink lips scream out in raw energy the songs of others which so delicately find words when mine are too hastily spat. My best is the things that I feel even when it doesn't make sense and becomes redundant but then again; some things should be said and repeated and said all over again for our own attention let alone someone else's. That's the trick, right? To find something that makes you actually feel something for yourself in the awkwardly dictated and simulated version of life.
How dare anyone tell you who you are when most do not know themselves. Nay, we cannot know ourselves but in the deepest understanding that we too, like the universe, change and move indefinitely.
But we keep ourselves in caves and teach fear of the light in the distance. We leave our tracks for beasts to come tear us away. We wear a face without eyes and call it realistic. We find any way to run off into other simulations and pretend to be enjoying our own. Why? Why do you cover your already closed eyes? Don't you know what's out there?
We chose to die. We didn't have to.