The Darkness

The darkness rolled in like fog on the horizon. It blanketed everything in its wake. It clouded our senses, making it impossible to see. There were people crossing our paths, but we couldn't focus on them. We didn't know what was in front of us or who we were. We didn't recognize the masks in the mirror. We didn't want to see the people we had become.

We were bogged down by the emptiness. It filled our hearts. And we drowned in our miseries. Sorrow spread her soulful wings and fluttered through the cavities where our hearts once beat. Our dreams were endless, but we didn't entertain the hope that tickled our fingertips when we touched through time.

Our thoughts, they ran rampant. Wild horses dashing across the deserted plains of our minds. There was panic down there, under the darkness. There was longing too. For the little children we once were. For the people we wanted to be. For the people we saw in each other.

The pitch black suffocated us, filling our lungs with grief. Flooding us with this forlorn feeling of being unattached. Alone. We choked on our regrets, on the mistakes we made, the hurt we caused. Like the veins snaking under our thin skin, we saw all our wrongs mapped out inside us. They were branded on our souls. They were all we knew in the darkness. All we trusted to be true.

Crawling into bed, the darkness was our comforter, but it held no comfort. A duvet so thick it threatened to suffocate us, to suck the breath out of our mouths, a reaper swallowing our essence. It was so cold in the darkness. Unforgiving. And we were children again. Lost. Broken. Searching for someone to hold out their hand and pull us out of the tar slowly eating us alive. An endless snake, twisted up our legs, coiling around us, binding us to our flaws.

The darkness reminded us of all our imperfections. Of our lies. And broken promises. It never let us forget the bad things. It never allowed us to move on.

We fumbled around, our trembling fingertips searching for a door out of the airless room. But we found nothing. No sound. No soothing words whispered. No laughter. This was not where we wanted to be. This was not who we chose to be. And still, we languish there. Too weak to find our way out of the dark. Too stubborn to believe we deserved more than the loneliness and hollow lives we lived.

What we wanted was juvenile. To run and skip and play. We wanted to see the sunshine on the horizon and chase butterflies. Our bare feet longed to feel the dew on the morning grass and our noses itched to smell the wet earth after a rainstorm. We wanted to stand before a mirror and not cringe at what we saw. We wanted happiness, in its truest simplest form. We wanted to not be repulsed by self-reflection. To not have our stomachs turn when we saw ourselves in the dirty windows and glossy hoods of fancy cars.

We wanted to let go. Of the darkness. We wanted to be bathed in light.

Our dark hearts. The ones we showed each other. They were broken. They beat erratic and without purpose. Their wounds dated back to a time and a place when we didn't exist. Still, we dragged our burdens with us. Pulling them along the gravelly ground, too scared to release them. Too damaged to confront the pasts we could not change. Too scarred to heal. The damage was already done.

Then you stood before me. As I stood before you. And I held up a match. To show you the light. And you drew closer. Under my breath, I said, "Even in a world of darkness, a single, insignificant flame has enough light to draw us home."

With unfettered hope and love and trust and peace, I came towards you, as you came towards me.

And, just like that, the darkness ceased to be.