Darkness

Last night between teeth grinding and wakefulness, I thought I understood the meaning of my last eight years, how I arrived where I am today, and I lighted, like a giant, smoky bug, on the pedals of a monumental, black flower. I am in the darkness, after passing through light and hope; after losing hope, community connections and my very identity; and after unsuccessfully searching for myself in the realm of remembering. It is beautiful in the darkness, more beautiful than in the full light and hopefulness, most definitely better than the longing gaze to memory. Sentimentality only occasionally and dimly wafts through these lightless halls, a brief whiff of my dead father’s pipe smoke, his voice on an answering machine repeating into infinity that he will return, the invisible umbilical cord connecting me to my dead mother as she walks to a podium one last time, my body resting on my favorite, faraway, lover’s chest, fitting so perfectly that we think we will be together forever, the dry, hot breeze from an open window on a lone, night drive through central Texas. These are the occasional that enter my regular, extant walk through the corridors of a dreamy gloaming amidst deep, dark truths, in the halls of the mythical, primordial and vaguely romantic. In this darkness, my eyes adjust as if in an Italian cathedral, the image of a Giotto or Bellini slowly revealed.

Like the pangs of grief, if this darkness is denied, my heart will be shot through with holes, my fragile soul shattered. This contemporary and relentless pursuit of happiness does not belong to me. Instead, I fear a disregard for the truths of living. The pain of it. Darkness, like a trick birthday candle, cannot be extinguished.

My body and soul tumble through a voluminous blackness because I am not held in place by love. I accept the sadness this brings. Not depression, not loss of strength, just sadness. I have given up the battle for love in air that holds no moisture. I have entered the free fall, and know that when I land, the darkness and loneliness total, the fresco image finally and completely obscured, I must love nonetheless. I must love when no one is loving me.

A new phase will follow, perhaps light, perhaps hope, perhaps something I cannot guess at now.