Jolene Nicola DeCross

Waking at quarter to two with a jolt, wretched nothingness, hungry, drained and foreboding. Enveloped in darkness, a voice shattered the silence with my name. — I felt like fading away, not wanting, not caring, not thinking; fading like a politician's promises after election day. Willing to walk away with a pocket full of good intentions dragged out and tossed onto the wind-swept street like an abandoned newspaper, bouncing, tumbling along the sidewalk, catching itself on a fire hydrant where bitter winds slap it mercilessly against the cold metal.

Too easily given into temptation like the dumb drunk boy with a crush who follows me home — he needs my attention. Truth is he would give in because he wants to give in, wants that little push and so winds up drooling like some little child with a favorite flavor of a sucker. The instinctive reaction the same as a three-legged male dog still needs to lift his missing leg though it nearly loses balance.

She wouldn't dance with him, so he danced with me. A king and his court will scheme and plot and murder until all is ash. Until buildings are ash. Until bodies are ash. Until the truth is ash. And the writings of a thousand muses are ash. In that moment, trapped within desire, so far away, he did not care about his future. His hands trembling with desire he fulfilled his need for adventure.

We danced, laughed, and told stories.

Darkness pulled reality into nothingness. Pressured, taunted, and haunted, we faded away because the instinctive heat of survival like a splayed female, legs propped open in stirrups, panting and writhing in pain brings reality, the truth perpetual. Lurking, those devils wait for a slip, a doubt; to lose faith, to stumble on a stone, filling the heart with disbelief, devouring the flame, the flame of promise — the flame like tomorrow's offering, the unbelievable redemption of another opportunity to smile and long faces will grow shorter.

Nightmares fade as the mind searches the memory for truth. But I still remember the joy of saying I love you as emptiness clings to my back, taunted, haunted, spit upon with the truth of their own unrequited bitterness. Salvation beckoned it to fade, and it faded into what it was, Darkness, and what it would be; Reality.