Whole Again

     I saw the trouble on the horizon.  A small black speck, a horseman, featureless and small.  As it drew closer, I didn’t know if it was a conscript I manifested from unclean living and paranoid thought processes, or if it was as concrete and real as the fact that I was born into this world. A world of dichotomy and disparate circumstances. Circumstances that I could never quite seem to blame on environment or timing, or on somebody else. I would always take full responsibility. it was where my heart lay. A heart that knew that there was beauty in this life, but that the beauty was cinched on all sides by desire and fear. Beauty was created to be  consumed, processed and discharged as joy, a happiness to be spread thickly and evenly, butter on toast, lotion on smooth pale skin. But for me, the harbinger of things to come was always a specter that kept the joy in check, making anxiousness a fixture not unlike grandmas hope chest, the one that could be mine if walked the  line expected of the righteous, the line that good people walk. There were times that I thought I had embraced happiness, had beat the beasts into submission and lived the life of the lion, hunting when I had to, loving when I could and relaxing in the vastness of the savannah not scared of the lightning on the horizon. But as the rider closes in, I can see the severe grin on her face, the cracked veneer of her lips and her hand reaching for mine.  I will go with her, I always do, but first I hand her my locket, the one with the picture of my mother.  A token of my affection of the fact that joy is nothing without the warm wet kiss of suffering. She pulls me astride and we ride into a darkening sky, ready to slay the beasts that would eat our hearts and come out on the other side thinking that we are whole again.

Reviews

[Kelly Scheppers]

I believe it's the triumph of our desires and fears that bring our life into focus. The locket you mentioned that held a picture of your mother brought this to its fruition for me. The manifestation of the horseman was the harbinger of things to come, the specter that kept the joy in check, which in reality is our saving grace...what makes us whole again.

[Crowley]

Thanks Kelly!!! Hope your week is a good one and thanks for stopping by!!!

[John the Baptist]

The key words in this one are desire and fear. The speaker has tasted joy, but has simultaneously seen that joy taken away. The female rider may be a figure of consciousness that reflects the ongoing presence of fear. At the end we are told a conflict is coming, but there is a chance wholeness may come out of it. The work reads like the description of a dream, not necessarily a nightmare, but one whose disturbing images lurk on the edge of awareness.

[Crowley]

That’s kind of what it felt like writing it. The first line popped into my head and I just rode it. Thanks a million!!!