Capricious

32 - Caustic Rhapsody

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."
- Kurt Vonnegut

A dream of that younger thing, within the park we gather. Braided rhythms of hair now red, now brown, now blonde as they spin in the sun's setting glow. Her gleeful, soft, freckly face such a beauty to my mind. I flirt so sharply, so eloquent and deft, she giggles at every joke, excitement in her every stride. I ask, she smiles, nods, my hand in hers, we leave that little soirée. Together we walk, yet our path becomes crossed, grey squirrels chasing red, all across the field. Saving them to spurn myself, still we draw to our seclusion, a reach and all is gone, and then the dream world right with it. Sleep cushions the blow, and I wake with a sense that I've dreamed said states before, ever ending the same, ever mirroring my now feeble existence.

An eternal bloody war, myself against shadows, the forms my anxiety takes. I swipe them down, yet there they rise again, after presuming to believe they had perished. An endless army for all things, I tackle again and again, strengthen my swing with lesser demons only to find no path around the large. All my life this battle terrorises my mind, freezes my body, breaks my will. Screaming against everything, even knowing they can't exist. Each one defeated in a different way to the last. I can only look back, view the plains of the struggling dead to see how far I've come, my only resolve to carry on. I fear it'll never end, I fear my wounds may bring me down for good, I fear to help myself. It's just too hard, it wastes my time, breaks my spirit, ruins my life. Will I ever escape these monsters that ever loom so large? Will I ever find myself crossing those bridges in the distance, anxiety lying slain within my wake? Will I ever be free to rise as large as life again?

Happiness is an illusion, I can see it glitching, it's not real, I'm dying.

Faltering with a sudden turn of anxious cramping, drowning out the world, a sickening spell and stolen breath, I forget how to respond. Sliced by conspiracies sharpening within my head, and so swift all my accomplishments and by-standing friends mean nothing, against something I know means so little, but feels so large and looms so vast.

Now truly flying high among an entirely original set of characters, a new start at the end of an era, I breathe again, the grip of salt ridden daggers withdrawing from my chest, my back, my skull. Free from frowns and frantic fraternisations. I settle down with myself once more.

Coming up for air, just to drown and drown again. Less water, more air now it seems, still no one can ever hear me scream.

Misty rain flirting with me, challenging me to become all I can be.

I crouch behind the hedges of greater men than I, feeding slowly with an open ear, providing an impression of their worlds, a thousand views adding to my realm of understanding. Still no answers come, everything relative, everything depends, and yet all make the mistake of capitalising on categorisation, no dividing all the way. To be an advocate of information, yet filled with an innate desire to flare iridescently upon said beach of mind, to learn and teach, to fashion a future so perfect we forget what monstrosities existed and why. The war has changed, reflecting on the past to provide an insight blurred by progress, still comparisons can be drawn, my own fault perhaps that I can never discredit. Oh, what am I to do?