Right of Survivorship

Blood red visages of carnage and human waste fill my mind�s eye. Looking deep within my soul, I see a darkness that is oppressive, like a heavy woolen cape draped about my shoulders. My soul is withered and dying. My skin bristles at the touch, craving pain, craving release. I see eternal damnation. I see where my life is leading. I see that which I must do. Yet, with tears streaming down my cheeks, like salted rivers of torment, I hold still. I am mired deep in the expanse of a raging river of emotions. My feet are ensconced in boots that swell with the tide, adhering to the river bottom and holding me fast. My heart is laden with grief and the grief is of my own making. But I WILL persevere. I WILL reach the shore. I WILL find salvation.

I have always reveled in the sweet release, the loving embrace of pain. Its melody plays upon my body, its rhythm, a steady staccato on my soul. It builds slowly like a symphony, tottering towards a crescendo that crashes inexorably upon me. As always, when the music is over, when the orchestra has left the premises, I am left bereft of all emotions. I am a sundered soul, a withered husk that fades into obscurity. This is my life.

Grasping at reality like a drowning man reaching for the reeds that dip over the embankment to drink from the rushing waters of the river, I search for the release of my pain. Circumventing the falls that will crush my body on its wild ride into oblivion is my only desire. I need a hand. I need salvation. And I shall have it.

Emotional loss plays upon my heart much like the piercing of a lawn dart as its tip breaks the pliant surface of the earth and embeds itself shoulder deep within. I have gambled with loss, and in so doing have lost. I do not cry for myself. I cry for another. In time, others will as well. When it is shown, when life turns the corner and heads down the next street, his loss will be known. He has been cast adrift and has lost any chance he ever had at a future. My heart rends itself for him. But now, at this point, there is nothing more I can do for him. Life has cast its lot like an aged crone who casts her bones to divine the future and he has been thrown to the wolves. Now it is up to him to swim for the shore. It is up to him to survive and I pray with every ounce of my blackened soul that I can be there when he needs a hand to be drug forth from that river in which I now flounder.

As for myself, a hand has dipped defiantly into the waters that are threatening to overcome me. It is a hand that I remember from long ago, a hand from the past. I remember holding that hand for hours and hours as I would walk about, dazed by a perpetual wonderment that filled my mind and soul. A darkness that mirrored my own, mingled with my essence and forever more attached itself to my heart. That hand has reached out to me and I am now ready to take hold of it. Though my muscles are cramped and weary, though my soul is exhausted from its painful overexertion, I reach for that hand with all my essence. Grasping hold, my muscles strain against the lethargic prison in which they have fallen from my tribulations. My mind and soul scream in unison as I am drug forth from the deadly prison in which I have landed. Salvation has come for me.

I have loved and I have lost. Once was enough to destroy my essence, twice even more so. I will not lose again. I will have her and the salvation that she brings with her. Her soul once bolstered mine and it will, once again. Until we are together, I will sit here and fight these demons that plague me. I will survive this tempestuous onslaught of pain and destruction, because that is what I am, a survivor.

Praise the survivors. Theirs is the vision that keeps time rolling forward.