Winterfold

Expressions 1

Cold, bitter air stung my face. However, I suppose I was the last one left to complain. The sun draped itself over the horizon, weary from the long day.

They say a man is not forged to stand by himself, but evolved to the presence of others. I too, was one such man, but fallen now to the mere company of a housecat.

The very nature of the world had shifted, the axis of what we understood polarized into a sheer alien reality. The nature of mankind became the nature of one man.

That is to say, that I was the only human left alive. This was the grim conclusion I had reached after months of seeking. Perhaps more existed, but it seems none dwelled within the borders of the state.

The virus came like a raging wave, yet eerily calm. Billions dead within days.

Was I cursed or blessed to remain? The poor and the rich both crumbled into one undignified grave, and yet still my flesh had maintained its health. My survival was an enigma— and there were no scientists left to explain it.

Some said that it was the divine providence of God, a punishment for the sins of man, but I was not inclined to faith. Be that true, perhaps, then was my survival a blessing or a curse? Was I special enough to be spared of plague, or accursed enough to remain on the fallen earth? Perhaps the very heavens had forgotten me, leaving me to wander eternally.

Regardless, one can only think so long before the abyss creeps into their head. Sleepless nights full of regrets and what-if's had shifted me closer to the border of insanity. My brain had shut off the thoughts, but that was inhuman and impossible to maintain so the great machine in my skull whirred back up, gears clanging down the rabbit hole of solitude.

I caught sight of a bird perched on the archaic electrical poles, and registered the smell of metal and industrial decay. Broken glass covered the ground, my thick boots crunching them underfoot. I carried a spear in one hand, and my cat in my other arm.

A bag of necessities hung from my rear, a large sentinel tasked with holding up the rearguard. My large pack was overflowing with inventory, chock full of random objects that would perhaps one day be useful.

The weight was like the metaphorical weight of what was left of my world. In it I held a photo album and my journal. The pictures of my family and friends— smiling, happy, sane, and alive— could be medicine enough for my soul, but even more so was my journal.

An inconspicuous vessel of paper, bound by black fabric and a dark cover with splotches of white— it was the cheap kind of journal you could find at the discount store. However the static pages held a life of their own. A soul was woven into its very core.

This simple, unsuspecting notebook was more of a treasure than it seemed— yet no pawn shop or king would trade for its contents. Truth is the old journal was one that my little brother owned. A school notebook that my brother carried in his backpack for a year, never so much as utilizing it. A pizza stain marked the cover, and random sketches occurred in some of the margins. His friends had opened it up to random places and left things like "Joey was here" for him to find. Perhaps the most poignant was the third page— marked with something more intimate.

Perhaps my brother was in more of a poetic or philosophical mood one day in class. Maybe his history teacher read them a tearful account of victims of war. Or science class implanted the frailty of life in his head. No matter the reason, within this page was a random collection of thoughts and doodles, a message expressing the chance that he might one day die.

He surely never expected this day to come; for this notebook to be so important to me, but it was. The edgy, random thoughts of a 15 year old boy cemented my heart in a strange way.

However life is equally defined by the future as it is the past, and the future involved my own writings. The journal now became a book of poetry and memoirs. I expressed my heart and my thoughts, pages consumed by the fanatic frog of self-expression. Art itself was the only thing warding off insanity, and perhaps sadly— it was working.