Am I 'Absolute'?

15: Fire taring me apart

I am a jungle on fire.

The vines that hold me together are slowly burning down and watch helpless as the trees they once supported snap and fall. The smoke chokes out any rain or sun and I see the angry clouds soaked crimson with my jungle's blood.

   You tell me to plant new saplings and the birds and life will return again. So I plant my saplings and I have for five years of raging fire, following the ashes and seeing the corpses of my jungle left in a wasteland.

Five years and I still hear the awful crash of another tree and the desperate scream of another animal. Five years and the saplings haven't grown but stay as barely grass in the charred rock ground. Every step I take further to regrow is another dozen lives I have lost as I follow the devil fire, slowly disintegrating my thoughts and burning me a fever so numb I can't find hope.

But I'm reminded every time I give up that I need to keep growing, no matter how fruitless it seems, because a firefly will flutter past and a bird will peck at the bugs in my grass and a rabbit will bounce along my new field.

   "Don't listen to the lies of my enemy," you say, "I have told you to plant my saplings and that - you must do with faith."

So I will continue to grow and someday I will turn around. Then I might see a stronger, richer jungle blooming. It will be a jungle grown from tough ground and one that will rise through ashes. It will be a jungle that has learnt how to live without the reliance on sun or rain.

   That jungle will be worth all this pain.