To The One Looking Ahead By Anonymous
To the one looking ahead, I’ll try to explain this to you as honestly as I can. The moon dusted roar of my revelation—what you already knew, but were too desperate to admit. You sat up at night, dream struck, eyes tossed to the stars—ice-crystals ground up, wondrously scattered—only your eyes also flew past, into the far blackness. And what greeted you, waiting so perfectly there? Fear. Nothing but. Only just. Remember how all you wished for, secretly, other consciously, in the scarlet caverns of your heart, was the power to grasp hold of it: to have all Destiny laid out in mapwork by your side, right then and there. A chrysalis of frozen time. Well, since the virus—time has frozen, in away. I don’t know what else to say. So, I’ll listen instead. To the quakes in your gut. They lacked blood. They wanted to devour the world. Twenty, going on twenty-one. College? Grades? Graduation?Employment? Friends, girlfriends? Happiness. If only—you would appeal, and don’t deny it—if only you had it all, preassembled in your palms, you could finally stop worrying. You could stop dreaming before dusk. You’d be happy. Then you were forced to let go. You and everyone else. A nation, an entire planet, cut free and cast twirling into the limbo of what-will? what-if? what, why? There are men with smaller mouths to feed. Women with plump bellies kicking with life. War heroes haired quicksilver, gazing still and silent at the wired-shut gates of their homes—even now at attention, peering out for that invisible enemy to trespass and swipe away the last breaths from their sleeping friends. Your letting-go is merciful, tenderly vital, a vein in the blood web of a primate race still learning to draw water from the well without stumbling, drowning. All that control, cautious balance—where would it really get you? Someplace permanent and pacific, a float of foam over a vast and misty sea. Measure the lulls in your pulse: any moment now a deep-earthen bone could shiver to wake a volcano in a heaven wide sigh of ash and death enter. And when that end inevitably comes, think of what will be left of you. The gravities of your life, the efforts, the strains...A man with skin the hue of ebony died the final Monday of May. You are confused. Let me explain another way: Knee-to-throat, cheek-on-asphalt. A murderer of the most focused degree, and the murderer was an archangel, a servant sworn to protection. Listen. Hear his charge cry and sigh. Watch him search for his mother’s eyes. All that met him then was darkness. Darkness within darkness. Darkness beyond darkness. You’ve learned that in this country the history of ebony drips snowy white with lies, the torture of phantom chains. It calls on fires, streets splitting with bodies, raging souls. The void, after all, is the womb of creation. Only where there is nothing can anything grow uncorrupted. Emptiness, the incubator of purest light, sterile and hopelessly immaculate. Here, all deceit evaporates. The snakes wither in their whispering coils. Take a cue—there’s no shelter for mendacities in our world anymore. The dark, the chaos, comes whether you’re comfortable in your castle of self-deception or not. In the end, entropy will always erupt. You know this. At least, you’ve sensed part of it. ‘Life is the shipwreck of our plans,’ certainly, but ‘Life’ is irrelevant. In fact, it doesn't even exist. Living is our true, watery wandering, from coast to sunburned coast, isle and frost lit aisle, beneath galaxies of magic-spun mystery, teardrops of lightning whipped sorrow... Eventually, all those who choose the journey will find their way. The world’s too big to presage with human eyes. Rather, trust those of the stars you chase. They watch with the vantage of ultimate distances. They guide us afar and eternally home. I’ve said nothing that isn’t already obvious, bone marrow-known. You might feel underwhelmed. You might feel the urge to turn and glance back. Don’t.There's nothing worth hauling there. You’re no longer caught in those dogs. Tat’s only your shadow you see, a universe alien and extinct. Reality starts anew every fresh look we give ourselves. It’s never too late to change, to be better. It’s only too late to wish it went down another way. Take my word for it—Wishes are meant for more wonderful things. So, for the last time: This is you, holding me close. And this is me, letting you go. From the one right here
