Can’t see the light from the dark...

He opens his eyes and thinks he sees the whole world out there. But what has become clear - and really just in the last few months that he's been delving a bit more into himself, is that he's actually seeing just a fragment of everything that's out there. Even though he so vividly believes in the weight of the world around him, it's not really all that significant. So, he sets off to find new worlds with more meaning. Worlds with more tangible consequences. Somewhere, he can be safer and not feel judged all the time. A place where he would stop running from himself and finally lay down his arms. 

It won't pull me under...

He misses you on battlefields, in shadows, in fading ink, on cold ice splashed with the blood from his scars. In the rings of trees. In the wreckage of an existence, slowly crumbling into oblivion. In bubbling water. In bee stings and dragonfly wings, in stars. In the depths of lonely woods, he wanders to pass the time of his increasingly meaningless day-to-day. Yet still, you watch him. You slid back through his life, and he has known you since before he knew you.

Recently, I also started to believe in some sort of afterlife. In another universe, we paddle through the atmosphere like seals, where the air itself is sustenance, and all one has to do is open one's mouth and inhale to remain alive. Maybe there we're together again. Or maybe you are even closer still. Maybe you are the flower that started to bloom in my living room, even though I thought it died long ago. Maybe you are that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. Maybe you're still here, guiding me and keeping me safe from the utter disappointment of the world. I'm not giving up. Not yet.

The ladder starts to clatter...

That's great, 

it starts with an earthquake.

Birds and snakes, 

and aeroplanes,

and Jean Karr

is not afraid.