I Am Darkness
Where
were you last night? In bed, no doubt, or somewhere similar. Perhaps
couch, chair, mat or earth cradled your weary head in dreamy, gentle
hand. Brushed by breezes of slumber melodious, your eyelids drooped,
wavered, and at last closed. But did you sleep? Ah, that is the
question.
How
do you know you slept? How do you know you did not sleep? Could you
have slept and dreamed that you woke? Or laid awake and felt like it
must have been a dream? Perhaps. The question is – did you sleep
alone?
Lonely
is the pillow unshared with another. Lonely is the couch that
embraces but one. Lonely and heavy is the sleep of the single, for
alone must they bear the weight of the night. Did you know that
darkness is heavy? If you sleep alone, I think you do. If not – you
once knew, even if you cannot remember now.
Did
you know it takes strength to sleep alone? To wake from dreams
however wonderful or terrible and find no one there to say “You’re
awake now.” No one to solidify the burden of the darkness with
gentle hand, voice or breath. Loneliness. This is what the darkness
is made of. This is what bears you down into either dreams that feel
like waking, or presses you beneath a waking which feels like a
dream.
Now,
loneliness is, in itself, not a bad thing. For the longest time I
loved the lonely dark better for its sense of utter emptiness. The
shades of night were to me like a balm for restless thoughts which
soothed my mind into peaceful dreams. I was content in the lonely
dark, until the accident happened.
Flashes
of red, blue and white light and a sensation of utter numbness are
all that I can remember. They say I almost died. They say I will
never walk again. They say . . . they say many things, but I don’t
listen as much as I used to. They’re not really there, the darkness
has swallowed them whole. You see, that’s the one thing they say
that I always hear. They say I am blind.
What
to do with this perpetual darkness? Yes, I loved the night! But night
without day is not beautiful – it is cold, empty and like a knife
in the mind and heart that will never be removed.
At
least, that’s what I thought. In the darkness, I thought many
things. A few of them were hopeful, but most of them were sad.
Darkness dominated my thinking until I found each breath harder to
draw than the last. Each movement of the heart harder to contain. I
longed to burst forth from this darkness and into a waking dawn. Then
I had to remind myself – I will never see again.
It
is strange how you never long for something so strongly as when you
lose it. I remembered, through my darkness, the light of a fire. That
tiny spark which started a flame to warm and light the shadows. Light
gives shadows being. Without it, they are nothing. I used to like
lighting fires. Striking that match and watching the spark lace its
tendrils through wisps of old paper and dry grass. From spark it grew
to taper and from taper to a flame. Then the flames would dance with
the shadows, weaving and twirling them like breaths of twilight and
dawning. People say that the moon and the sun dance. I don’t think
so. I think the moon dances with the night and sun dances with the
dawn. I liked the moon best, until I couldn’t see. And, now I can’t
see, I can’t like either anymore.
Perpetual
darkness has a way of cloaking sounds and echoing voices. I know my
hearing was not marred – in fact, it has grown stronger. But since
I stopped listening, everything has just faded into a numb
background. Either the voices are too loud, or they’re so soft, I
cannot hear them. At first the realization scared me – that I might
be darkening my last link to the light by refusing to nourish it? But
with that first fright the sounds returned. They were so hard and
rough – like sandpaper filing through the brain – that I had to
go back. I had to return to the darkness.
I
remember this song I once heard. The beginning of it went something
like this: “Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk to
you again.” I loved that song, if only for the first two sentences.
It used to make me think of slipping into dark corners to tell
stories, or sitting beside a campfire and watching as the ashes grew
duller and duller until all the light vanished. Then I would talk to
the darkness. Now? Well, now I don’t even talk. Darkness isn’t an
old friend anymore – it’s me. I am darkness.
Forever.
And
no matter what I do, I will always fall asleep in the loneliness of
myself. Why does it have to be this way? I don’t know. I find it
hard to even care anymore. This is darkness – the friend in me.
Hello, darkness. Why am I talking to you again? Because you are my
only friend.
My
last friend.
The
lonely me.
Where
was I last night? In bed, I think.
In
the dark – alone.
1 people are talking about this
Oh my gosh! This is heartbreakingly beautiful, and I absolutely adore how you build this character, revealing details bit by bit...AHHH I love this story. <3 <3
ReplyDelete