“Are you still here?”
Illuminating lights brought warmth to this world, the world that had been my comfort for so long. The enchanting creatures that were in my hand. I had control, I controlled it all. In that world. The vibrant, radiating lights beamed with a timeline down to my mercy. That atmosphere was my creation…
“We’re here”
As my eyes began to turn, so did my reality. The warmth that I had felt was the warmth of my fatigue, the creatures that were in my hand, – frail and disfigured – just dolls. Insignificant . The control that I possessed – the control I never owned, now was shown to me through the hands of the ones who responded. Their hands, had the strength to hold my body upright with little force, with complete ease. Rough and calloused… yet my hands. My hands were frail and decrepit, in comparison, they were incomplete and minuscule, they ached with bolts of pain that continued to surge through my whole body, that started from my toes: trembling, turning, twisting into a view I could not fathom processing at that point. Twitching to a simple touch, my only thought: “Were these, my toes?”. It brought a churn to my stomach, a part of me that I was not disgusted to look on, as I had heard it every day. Its moans, aches, pleads. My pleads, from that small aching body.
A voice bellowed.
You were both there, I could hear, yet you left me so often. Was it that I was dead to you?
A door shut closed. My eyes slowly wandered and processed what it was that engulfed me: the ceiling that was above me, the four walls that hugged me, the floor which stabilised me. I did not have control over them, but even in this moment I’m recalling, I know I felt peace.
To close my eyes. To take a breath. To feel, life.
Yet even then I could only focus on the lack of control I had, with an aching urge ask to the shadows enclosing the room:
“Are you still here?”
An inquiry, a beg, a plea. The feeling of my lone presence wasn’t something I enjoyed , yet I was not opposed to it. The fragment of power I once held, so few minutes ago at the time, with the scraps I called creatures, was the only thing I wanted back, my sole want. My desire: Power, Control, Authority. Yet… this world destroyed my ideas, my identity, my freedom… but no, I could still control it. The one thing I knew well, was the power of life.
Now here I am years later, embracing that idea I have so often dreamed of.
You weren’t there, yet I can still hear: your demands, your screeches, your hands. You leave me so often. I wonder –
is dying the only way for me to catch your indifferent gaze?
The power of life, I know it all too well… nothing can stop you, if you become nothing first. Words that still run in my mind from the mouth of the one that I made “nothing”.
These eyes of mine, they’re fluttering… like a baby bird flapping its wings to stay alive, are my own eyes pleading with my soul to let myself, die. Bursts of pain run through my body, starting at my toes, yet this time, they don’t tremble like they used to, they stay firm as a drill pressing into the ground. This ground of mine stays wavering and uncertain. Uncertain in its next owners, uncertain if the person inside will make the same fate as its last owner for the month. It feels as if hours are passing, and… my stomach is grinding against itself. But instead of pleads, it demands to live. It opposes what’s forced in, and attempts to push it out, yet the hands of my body, still frail and weak, are becoming the strongest it’s ever been. Blocking the exit, with only one pathway in mind, to stay inside this creature I’ve called my body for so long. Travelling through my body again, I can feel my soul beginning to let go, and this creature begins to tremble and shake, my memory’s starting to turn hazy…
I concede.
I have no power over life.