The Ebb & Flow of Virtue

The Pursuit

The eagle's chocolate-dipped
feathers brushed along my skin as I outstretched my arms to fly.

This must be freedom.

The wisps of the clouds,
lined by pure silver and their canary tints cutting through their fragile phantasms,
looked upon me and attempted to shield the tuscan sun from setting me ablaze.
The sun's molten gold dropped from the infinite expanse, her warmth singeing the edges of the eagle's feathers beside me.
Pyrite fragrance enveloped me
in its invisible body, my skin absorbing the sun's heat as I grew closer to her fiery palace.

This must be freedom.

Abandon earthly concerns,
watch how insignificant we all are when we are tied down by our ankles,
our minds a blank slate before we all are painted into genius portraits or sketches of insanity.
Let the world quiver in your wake, my sun,
let them feel the effects of what their conceptual tethers can do to themselves.
I want to be unbound, touched by your magnificence.
I want to wake up from humanity's brainwash,
unlock the secrets of the macrocosm suspended amidst the beautiful, empty space.
So please, lend me the universe's untouched heat—the divinity that lies across the cosmos,
festering in the outskirts of a place our limestone minds can barely grasp
its fire-infused brilliance.

This must be freedom.

Bestow your beauty upon me —
the marigold glory of knowledge riveting
across time and space,
the chance to completely feel its radiating energy surge through the weakened flesh of my body, which has been cut from the cumbersome weight of immorality and chained by human frailty.
Burn the sins from my bleeding mouth into black ash and let it solidify into orbs of
volcanic obsidian as a reminder
that I am entirely free.

This must be freedom.

Watch how she cradles my broken
shape in her crimson arms,
the grandeur of her blinding light
ripping through the exoskeleton of my mold
to free my spirit.

The eagle flaps its wings in alarm,
its beak pricking my face
as I'm flying too close to the sun's shape.
But I ignore him.
I ignore the quivering clouds being pushed away by the ever-fickle winds.
I ignore the people below me who are bold enough to call me crazy.
I ignore the warnings in the back of my mind that the sun and her heavenly power is
slowly killing me.

You desire to implode from the earthly body you are confined in.
To be free, you must completely give in to me.

My body begins to burn away into pure light:
the social constructs,
the conformist mindsets,
the suffocating expectations.
All of it drips away like candle wax.

This must be freedom.

Pain rumbles all over my body,
my skin cracking like the desert grounds
in the peak of summer as hot, coursing energy
seethes within my blood.
The pain is so harsh and cruel,
the tumultuous waves of fire
so torturous that it could burn
the rest of the world with just a
lick of a single flame—
and yet I revel in its touch.

Freedom means the destruction
of the identity chaining you down.
If it is mankind that has imprisoned you, I will simply set you free.

I am a floating galaxy of white light,
my diamond skin a spectrum of all of the
colors existing within the universe.
The pain is gone.
I feel weightless in the sky,
a smile teasing at the corners of my lips
as I turn to look for the eagle who had guided me into the mystifying atmosphere.

I am free.

I look down to see the world beneath me
is of complete ruination.
Smoke drifts across everything like an opaque ocean while flames dance along the barren lands as if to celebrate the conquering of the Earth.
The eagle has been scorched to death,
his regal feathers nothing but dust and
the people who had shook their heads with distaste at my hopes now vanquished by
the destruction of the sun.
The sun takes my hand and guides me away from the ruins of society, assuring me that the sacrifice was worth it all.

This is freedom.