Restless Things

Like A Bullet To The Chest

Sometimes it's the ocean.

It's so vast. This never ending depth. It's broad body stretches across the earth, caressing each shore. There's something about that- that extreme openness and endlessness and yet, somehow, it connects everything. I wish to be a part of that.

I've contemplated it, allowed the very thought to steal away my sleepless nights. And so I lie there, watching the shadows paint the walls, the thin moonlight bleeding through the curtains. And I can almost feel it- that relentless sea. I can smell the salt water, taste it upon my tongue. I can feel the thick sand scrape between my toes and stick to my feet- endeavoring desperately to absorb me. I can feel the frothy foam cling to my clothes, only to be washed away by every pulse of the waves. The ocean's heartbeat. It reaches up my stomach, swarms the delicate skin at my chest, and tugs me further. Until I am completely devoured.

This thought invades rather suddenly at times. Aside from the timeless darkened hours outlined by night, it'll strike me in meaningless moments. I'll be performing the most trivial of tasks, and suddenly I'll hear it. The waves. But of course I can't really hear them. And yet I do. Scratching at the back of my restless mind. Calling me.

Other times it's space. The universe.

I'll pause a moment in my hurried life, perhaps when I've gotten off work, or back from school, any perceived obligation which owns my time, and I'll look up.

When day has surrendered to night and the earth, my side anyway, is bathed in darkness, the most remarkable thing happens. The stars are visible. I could go into the physics of it, the manipulation of light and gasses in the atmosphere but I'll settle with this, the stars are visible.

And I swear I can feel them. I feel them touch me with their light, I hear the raging heat in their hearts. It's not fire, mind you. A lot of people get that bit wrong. It's far more powerful. Fusion on a cosmic level. Unprecedented. Incomparable.

Stars, rotating planets pulled by undeniable attraction, collected satellites, blooming gasses, and soaring objects- these are the very dictation of life.

I want to be a part of that too, more than I already am. We're all made of astronomical elements. But I desire more.

And that's when the ache hits me. Like a bullet to the chest. I swallow it back down to that secret place it belongs. But somehow it always finds its way back up. It is all I know for sure. The only absolute. The possession of longing. I think it is precisely what makes us human. It is our design to long for, to desire, to crave, to need. It is our design to reach out past our own existence. To spread our desperate fingers into the abyss and feel for anything.

It is the pain of longing which demands our humanity. If we weren't so terrified of fragility, we might even surrender to it.