Tiny Thoughts.

65

641
I trudge through time like slime,
Thickening at my calves, hugging my body,
I bend this way and that, fighting my way forwards through the world,
My eyes, locked on their target,
My heart, set on prevailing,
I fight time as a proxy war,
I use it's vices, its advisors,
It takes my life, it steals my energy, swiftly and mercifully,
Time does not stop for anyone.
Nor does it dilute itself for me and my poor sick soul,
Just as I do not for it.
And before you know it, I am old a decrepit and half my life has been spent fighting this god forsaken war-not-war. The war we're too proud to admit.
Before I know it, my children and my children's children are fighting along my side and I am rapidly losing speed, rapidly falling behind.
I do not make them wait for me.

642
I never said I was a saintly man,
I knew better than that.
The universe didn't pull threads like that for you.
But the world?
Humans?
People clung messily to whatever idea of salvation they could scrounge up for themselves.
And I gave that to them.
I simply soothed their mind, slicked it with honey, sent them off about their day. Whatever they chose to do was theirs, it was not a weight I was required to carry.
I never said I was even good.
But I sure as hell know I'm not bad.
I provide a choice, I am nothing more than a crossroad that leads to even more forks in the trail. Whatever they may be, I only have control over mine.
Your choice, your choice.
-
Mentioning that,
I only barely remember the boy I met,
He called himself Jacob.
With hair thick and black and full of stormy skies,
He came to my doorstep,
He knew what I offered.
Like all the others,
I saw the tire in his bone, the ache in his joints, the weakness behind his eyes.
It only briefly occurred to me how young he was.
I never said I was a saintly man.
-
I beckoned him into my home,
I offered him food, a warm drink, something to jumpstart the heart frozen inside of him.
And little by little,
We got to work.
I laid out what I offered across the table, he only glanced over it with only the careless hopelessness of a dead man. He gestured vaguely, he hardly listened to my explanation, he waved over it all, he handed me the green bills. Heavy they were, in my hands that night.
He inched towards the door, hands hidden deep in the voids of his pockets,
I almost stopped him,
He hesitated in the doorway and I swore to myself, I could stop him, I could stop him.
Why didn't I stop him.
If only I had stopped him, I'd have said so many things, I'd say he was too young, I'd say the wear and tear in him was unnatural, it gets better, I'd say something stupid, something cliche, anything to get him to stay.
But I let him leave.
And the door clicked shut.
And never did Jacob come to my doorstep again.
That is a weight I will carry to my grave.

643
It was never that serious.
Life, bent so out of shape, distorted and distraught, I murmur to myself,
It was never that serious.
Burnt and burning and twisted and turning. Life was never meant to be this way.
Exist! The world screams!
You exist!
Just as the trees do!
Just as the bugs and crawlers and silverfish do!
Just as your father and mother and the moth in the burning lamp do!
You are not special.
You are not divinely preferred.
The world exists in spite of itself, and so do you. No more are you to the universe than a grain of sand.

644
Oh sweet baby,
You know not of what you love.
A man with knives and teeth instead of hands and lips.
You move so willingly towards, you collapse yourself in his comfort, feel his boiling warm arms encapsulating you.
You close your eyes because, in your mind, you are in the presence of the deity of safety. The pinnacle star at the height of the helix that is our sky.
Oh darling,
You know not of what you love.
A man who's hands have contemplated your life,
You move from mine,
So steadfast, so sure of your safety, of your love, of your life.
To one's of murderous intent.
Ones of sharp brittleness.
Oh sweet child,
You know not of the world around you.
You know not of the man you love.