Once Upon a Dark Time

Written at a time in my life when darkness ruled, I found this while digging through stuff I had packed up after the fire.

Every day is another day of an endless stream of constant reminders of the state of mind you’re in with no way out but inward introspection of where you’ve been and where you are not.

Looking out a window that you cannot see through for all the drapes are drawn and only shadows play on the other side if the sun is out and sprays its rays down far enough for them to show themselves.

Looking at the doors that go out to places your feet cannot enter, down paths and roads you cannot tread, to faces and bodies that can now only exist in memories that linger long and hard on your mind.

Finding solace in a bottle or a pill to hide the realities of that which you do not want to see anymore, all the time, giving places and faces to be and touch when nothing can be real enough anyway.

Wanting only to be anywhere else at least so something could be real enough to touch and know that it will not go away, ever.

Listening to songs of another time that surely existed somewhere out there when reality was but is no longer now.

Whispers echo down the hall, telling stories; some with endings, some without. Enchanted tales with princes and fairies and little boys with lots of toys, playing their games with smiles on their faces. Whispers get softer then become echoes then disappear into the darkness leaving silence behind with no one to hear them but loneliness.

Tears have dried on every square on every floor leaving faint stains of sorrow. Footsteps crisscross across them all leaving them hidden from all but those who left them there.

But yet and still a hand reaches through and then an arm and then two to embrace and hold you dear so close to show indeed you are not alone, in the dark. And, that is, in reality, reality.

I am grateful beyond words to Our Father that I don’t find myself in that place anymore, but I must admit I haven’t forgotten it.