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A plaintive wail in the dark.
Nothingness, no light by which to see. A body without form, an absence of sensation but, perhaps, the curious feeling of suspension.
Frigid cold-not thermal but the cold of aloneness. True solitude.
Alone.
But not alone, the self present in all its forms: memory and experience, nature and nurture.
Laughter: yours. Echoing distantly with the quality of an old record player.
Then sobbing, deep-seated heaves felt in the toes and all the way up, wails with no discernible beginning, no reason for their piercing of the silence.
The dark, alone.
Fear of the dark, of the solitude, but they have been there since the start in fluid suspension, the heart of a mother distant but apart, not quite together.
You've been here before. You have always been here. It is where you will return.
A spot of peace.
More laughter: not yours.
Not alone-far from it. Trapped without escape, arrested in this cage of darkness and aloneness-trapped with the other voice, the other presence fluttering against you with an intimacy you did not grant.
Another plaintive wail, your anguish and distress a sharp nail dragging down chalkboards.
