Faded

I look all around. There is blood. But it's faded. The world is faded. The death is faded. The rain that is falling is faded. The eyes of my sister are faded. The cries of my homeland are faded. All I can do is stand there, statue-still, as I feel myself rapidly falling away from reality. I don't even try to hold on anymore. I feel myself getting cold. So unbearably cold. Inside me somewhere there is agonizing fear but I can't feel it. I can only feel the aching need to hold on to something that is slipping away from me. I gasp. And then it all fades to white.

After all this blood falls down to the floor like rain I am left wide-eyed and dead-eyed and staring out into the world in concealed horror. I do not know how to move forwards from this. I do not know how to move. I do not know how to choose. I only know that in front of me is a white expanse of death and death and nothingness.

I cannot feel the overwhelming horror that coils deep in the darkness of my soul. I do not know how to move past the way my feet stay frozen in the ground. I am like a ghost-white stone statue amidst carnage and screaming and rain that mixes with blood and stains the world putrid red and steel grey.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But I'm not really sorry. If I was sorry then I wouldn't've let myself slip silent as you melted grosteque into the ground around me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Brother I'm sorry. Grandfather I'm sorry. Aunt I'm sorry. Sister I'm sorry. I remember seeing all the things your warm, kind, tired eyes suffered through and I remembered promising myself, never again. And I remember going back on that promise.

The choices splayed out in front of you are sometimes impossible. But we choose anyways. And that is the irony of it all. And the horror of it. We can only hope to be a flickering candle of light but the darkness is so vast it envelops us and consumes us. May the stars guide us into our places, into the everlasting place where nothing leaves a bitter taste on your tongue.