Where the ashes settle
Darkness swirls from the edges of a confused state of mind, making tremble the soul like you hadn't felt it tremble before. Stirring in the shadows awakens a sense that there might be something that you hadn't thought of before...But before you have a chance to touch it, you realize you are tired of being burned - tired of marking each new scar, of awaking from the nightmares with sweat on your pillow.
So you go back to sleep.
Letting the emotions recoil within you. Letting the dust settle over the picture frames and letting the heat cool from the burning within. And soon, you start to think to yourself that it's done.
But it isn't.
Not yet.
No, somewhere too deep to tell at first: the fire is still breathing. And somewhere, so hidden that you almost forgot that it's there, the embers are still glowing with life enough to burn you should you reach out to touch them, to try and move them, to try and clear away the remains of what was once the light to which your soul could danse.
And yet, you can't deny the truth that the fire isn't blazing; that the light isn't spinning off the orange and yellow flames anymore - that the room where you once used to place all of your sacred things isn't lit by anything anymore. You knew you had to, sooner or later, admit that the space has grown dark and cold - that the sun couldn't reach the floor through the ash still hovering in the air...
and sooner or later, you had to come to terms with the fact that one day, you're going to have to have to clean up the room where the fire used to burn. You'll have to touch the embers again, and you'll have to move the emblems of things that once stood for eveyrthing that made you 'you'.
One day, you know you'll have to admit to yourself that this room still exists. You'll have to come back here, and you'll have to look around once again - and you'll have to face all of the now-ashen things you've stored here, out of sight for so long.
And some day, you'll have to come back here.
...But maybe for now, it's okay to close the door. Maybe for a while, it's alright to lose the map that leads you here and forget where you laid the key that gets you into the door. And maybe, just for a while, its okay to pretend that this room doesn't really exist. Maybe it's alright - just until the fire dies. Just until the embers cool, and the room is still and quiet; maybe just until the wind stops blowing through, and the ashes and dust settle over everything.
Maybe until then, it's alright to tell yourself to forget. And maybe it's alright to not revisit this room, this place - this old fireplace where the fire used to alight your eyes...at least until the sting of the burns turn into scars that make it easier for you to forget a little bit how much they used to hurt. And maybe, for a while, it can be okay to not walk by here - so you can, at least for a time, tell yourself that you don't have to go back...
Then, at least for now, things can still somehow be alright.
Or maybe not really alright. But at least you will be able to sleep through one more night and wake up to see the brightness of at least one more day - and you can tell yourself even that maybe at the end of it, things will really be all right again.
-RK
So you go back to sleep.
Letting the emotions recoil within you. Letting the dust settle over the picture frames and letting the heat cool from the burning within. And soon, you start to think to yourself that it's done.
But it isn't.
Not yet.
No, somewhere too deep to tell at first: the fire is still breathing. And somewhere, so hidden that you almost forgot that it's there, the embers are still glowing with life enough to burn you should you reach out to touch them, to try and move them, to try and clear away the remains of what was once the light to which your soul could danse.
And yet, you can't deny the truth that the fire isn't blazing; that the light isn't spinning off the orange and yellow flames anymore - that the room where you once used to place all of your sacred things isn't lit by anything anymore. You knew you had to, sooner or later, admit that the space has grown dark and cold - that the sun couldn't reach the floor through the ash still hovering in the air...
and sooner or later, you had to come to terms with the fact that one day, you're going to have to have to clean up the room where the fire used to burn. You'll have to touch the embers again, and you'll have to move the emblems of things that once stood for eveyrthing that made you 'you'.
One day, you know you'll have to admit to yourself that this room still exists. You'll have to come back here, and you'll have to look around once again - and you'll have to face all of the now-ashen things you've stored here, out of sight for so long.
And some day, you'll have to come back here.
...But maybe for now, it's okay to close the door. Maybe for a while, it's alright to lose the map that leads you here and forget where you laid the key that gets you into the door. And maybe, just for a while, its okay to pretend that this room doesn't really exist. Maybe it's alright - just until the fire dies. Just until the embers cool, and the room is still and quiet; maybe just until the wind stops blowing through, and the ashes and dust settle over everything.
Maybe until then, it's alright to tell yourself to forget. And maybe it's alright to not revisit this room, this place - this old fireplace where the fire used to alight your eyes...at least until the sting of the burns turn into scars that make it easier for you to forget a little bit how much they used to hurt. And maybe, for a while, it can be okay to not walk by here - so you can, at least for a time, tell yourself that you don't have to go back...
Then, at least for now, things can still somehow be alright.
Or maybe not really alright. But at least you will be able to sleep through one more night and wake up to see the brightness of at least one more day - and you can tell yourself even that maybe at the end of it, things will really be all right again.
-RK
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