Gentle rain fills the air
Taste of bitter coffee
The taste of bitter life
Only brings about within my soul a craving
For the sweet, enamored, smooth and lush potential
Impregnated within all the days yet to come
A chill that gnaws on my fingers as hot exhalation dances upon the air before my face
All gentle reminders
I am alive
It is true that I stared into that abyss
And it could be that the abyss stared back into me
But only created anew within me
This unmatched desire, tenacity, urge, yearning
To occupy the gaping nothingness that threatened to swallow me whole
With any and every beautiful little wisp of life that I could create
To fill the abysmal and bleak
With the profound
To make this world of mine whole once more
Endeavoring to piece together all of the shards of this broken existence
To raise up
And finally allow the warm sunshine to dance through all of the colors of my soul
As I pull another drag and whisper into the air a smoky breath
A wordless acquiescence
That this intense drive for meaning
May not raise its weary head tomorrow
Or in a week
But insisting upon wrapping it tight, if only for now
That I embrace and hold fast to it, today
Comfort and acceptance in this realization
Discovery
An overpowering awareness
I am not the shape of this world I have been born into
I will never fit the contours cozily
Of a destiny not fashioned of my own free will
Rather, I too hold a pen
And it is my own strength and obstinacy
That will drive my hand
Shaky
At times
Steady so rarely
But a constant
The pen is in my hand
If I am a book
Then I am no longer to ignore passages simply so that I might tell a better story only to please those who sit beside me
My lines, my edges, my contours
Shapes of my intangible self
Me
A new creature to behold
After a bleak pause in my consciousness
After
Staring helplessly
Hopelessly
Straining to find beauty in a story that is outside the limits of my soul's ability to perceive
Reading those bleak nothings
Frantically
A voice gone hoarse and rasping
Over and over again, words not born of my own hand
Praying
Pronouncing and repeating
Each line of foreign text
Until my throat was raw
And my tongue burned
Live!
Live!
I begged
Until eventually it came to be
That I could no longer turn my gaze back into myself
Finding what was within to be repulsive
If that which was within me wasn't enough
For someone else
Until the truth shook me from my roots to my limbs to my leaves
Unsettling the air around me
The very universe folding in on itself for
Five minutes?
Ten?
Father Time slept as I opened the box
And it was within that breathless limbo that I understood
I can stitch together all that is within and all that is without
Fashion a new reality
One that the whole of existence can gaze upon once and only once
That pen is in my hand
And so
I choose sushi
I choose the silken hair of my children brushing past my cheek
A tempered mug of strong coffee
Inhaling the autumn wind as it billows through the open window on a long drive
Laughs shared with a dear friend
Hellos to strangers
Unprovoked smiles to passersby
To splash my own color upon the canvas of all those who venture near
To hungrily seek meaning
To mend and repair
Understand that all great works of literature were never jotted down in a mere moment
But rewritten and fussed over
Just as I now contemplate this life of my own
I open the box and in my hands I turn over once more this heavy truth that pervades the entirety of my being
A beautiful life will mean the staunch resolve to pen my very own lines
Onto the pages of what fate may have already written
To create anew
A story old as time
Make it my own
Bend the world around me to fit my benevolent truths and my joyous whims
Again and again
Each day
Even if it may be only one word today
On others an entire soliloquy
Insisting for all the tomorrows that will be
Upon amplifying
Ameliorating
As this pen and the power to do so shall always remain within my grasp
Such
Is my newfound hope
