Explanation / The Grasp

1.
-Where have I been? No posts in so long?-
I know, I know.  Life happened. And my head has been filled with other things and my imagination took a hiatus.  The first break it's had since I was 4 years old.  It was well deserved and long overdue.  I did not know when it would return..but..here she is.  Fresh and teeming with energy. Not sure where she went, but Zeus help us, now that she's back.


2.
An icy phantom hand passed beyond my chest.  In seconds it’s jagged fingers enclosed around the beating center of me. I gasped and no noise came, just a puff of my visible breath.  The icy hand began to constrict and I could feel my heart straining to beat.  There was no physical pain, just a mental and emotional one.  I felt all the loves I have had in my life flicker.  I saw my future, and watched as someone dimmed the lights.  On my knees I crawled along the ground, but I could not go on.  I fell over and rolled to my back.  My breath was choppy, irregular now.  My eyes refused to focus, my jaw went slack, my body relaxed no long responding to my commands.  I felt lost and confused but at the same time content and calm.  I tried to think of the irony of it all, but words began to lose their meaning.  No longer were they tied to concrete, physical things.  Instead they were floating vapors in a vacuum, they no longer mattered.  I wanted to smile but my body was not responding.  Startled from my thoughts by the creaking of a distant door that I couldn’t see.  I paused, waiting for it to close again, but that’s when sound gave up the fight.  No longer did sounds carry, almost like they decided not to do it, all on their own.  The sound was there, but not released, not given to the world.  It was kept hidden, and to itself. I would not know if the door shut. And again, I thought of a smile, and it was almost as good as the real thing, no it was better, it was more of a real thing more than it’s physical embodiment. I felt the happiness.  Shapes in the dark begin moving and colliding and merging into a sea of moving pieces of a past.  A past I couldn’t remember, but felt kindred.  Faces of a history I could only hope was mine.  Tears sped down my cheeks and the thought of a smile returned.  I recognized the beauty of it all, but it felt like a secret I was seeing for the first time.  It was something so special that the impact was almost more than I could handle.  The images grew darker and darker, and began folding in on themselves until what remained was long black room with a pinprick of light at the end.  Was this it?  Was this the end? Is this what it looks like?  I willed myself towards the light, I broke free of my restraints, my tethers to the ground below.  And that’s when I was reminded of my heart, caught it’s trap.  The beating was still strained, but still it beat, and the phantom’s talons eased its grip, slightly. I pulled and tugged and tried to move, but I was anchored, anchored by this grasp.  Hope was escaping like water in a drain, when I felt the grasp falter again, and loosen.  I doubled my effort and tried to pull myself from its clutches, another degree of relief, another loosening of the grasp.  I felt a torn feelings, one of elation and one of sadness.  If I pulled free, I’d go back to my days, and fulfill the rest of my time with less detail, fewer feelings, and words and sounds would matter.  If I allowed the grasp to win, then I could return to the past and the future, and enjoy all that has happened and not happened yet and break the chains of reality.  I was on a tipping point; I was balanced on the fulcrum.  Where will I go, what will I choose?  The light expanded, the hand retracted, I curled back up on the floor inside myself.  I willed my eyes closed, and I immersed myself in the blackness.  The light fought to allow me to see it, but I restrained I myself, and everything began to spin.  Blurring images, surrounded by colors and debris. I collapsed…and stopped caring…stopped thinking…stopped fighting…stopped loosing.  The end was decided and I had no choice in the matter.  I would float where the waves pushed me.