Angel

It is discouraging to feel the dark rift in my chest begin to leak once more. That inky liquid, slow to spread but with horrific persistence, seems to be dripping through the lower half of my heart. Seeping, creeping, thriving and lurking in the darkness of my soul. Feeding off the hateful words that, I know, have been written by my own actions. Can one truly hate oneself?

Then a hand like a dream reaches out with angelic fingers, straining just to touch. It finds my soul, it fills me with light like a whiff of the most perfect drug, it provides clarity and cures the incurable. Trembling with gratitude, I grab the wrist of the gracious hand and, with all the blind fury of a beast cut from leash and freed from bars, I rip through the air, demanding to see the face of he who has freed me. Surely, a joke. Who would dare to make a mockery out of the likes of me? How utterly foolish.

Yet this pain, so biting and severe, is so refreshingly different from the despondent wretchedness I was forced to endure. For this pain? It is not pain, it is not sorrow, it is humble gratitude in its purest form. This man, whoever he can be, has saved me from an existence more loathsome and detestable than that of any maggot, any creature, any cur, blackguard, scum, or wretch. I carried the devil as a leech on my heart, but this angel has cast him hence.

I wish to thank my savior, but my pride trembles in its grotesque ugliness. Instead, all I can do is gape quite moronically at him, wishing I could know his face. If for a moment. As it is hidden by a modest veil, colored like the night sky. With his jaw turned aside, his identity hidden shyly, and the corner of his lips, which I can barely find among the black, quirked half-laughingly... he drops his arm. The ice of my soul redoubles, my weak body crumbles, my weakly pulsating heart flutters, and the floor greets my nose with a malicious kick.

"And the sky is filled with light... can you see it?

             All the black is really white... if you believe it.

                                                        As your time is running out,

                                                                            let me take away your doubt.

          You can find a better place in this twilight.

                                                     Dust      to      dust

                                               Ashes in your hair remind me what it feels like.

                                                                      And I won't feel again.

      Night descends. Could have been a better person, if I could only do it all again.....

                          And the longing that you feel.            You know none of this is real. 

You Can Find A Better Place In This Twilight."   ~Nine Inch Nails

                                                                                                                                ML