Penitent

Steadying myself against the gate, I glance up at our home. I picture it as I push against the boundary. For a brief moment I am betwixt the memory and reality, my wounded soul thankful for the reprieve.

I cannot escape that it was never meant to be me nor just I, but you and them. Even now terrified as I am, I lean on you both for strength. Hoping your ghosts may follow where even shadows dare not dwell.

Steeping inside, the world is ordered but inversed. Where there should be light, darkness, and darkness, light. While ahead passed the abstractions lay a winding path. Its halls curving up and down, left and right. Slowly I make my way through its confines, the floor falling behind me.

Trapped now within, I feel the eyes of hungry phantoms. Their voices whispers on the wind.

“Once there were three”, they echo.

“The first yelled and screamed, howling as it witnessed what was lost.”

“The second comforted, speaking as if it wasn’t their fault.”

“And the third wept, for they alone understood what they had wrought.”

Their words, unexpected, anchor me. Beckoning half forgotten memories. Of when the stars first revealed their maws, and the world below screamed in silence.

How much time had passed since then?

Did they know what we had done?

I remember when last we spoke, when you both asked me to join you. To take one last chance on a coin flip and try for a better future. I wander had I gone with you then, would we still all be together?

Like poison the thought courses through my yearning heart. Enamored, I find myself embraced by the infinite. My feet swaying, lost amongst the what-ifs and could-have-beens.

I take a heavy breath and steel myself. The time for such dreams has passed, they are not how this journey ends.

Forward I continue, my limbs heavy from the strain. In time their voices dim. Drowned by the hum of machinery, and the slow footfall of my passing.

Nearing the ruptured womb, I see it sat. A broken thing, on a carrion throne. Under the gravity of its gaze, I am overwhelmed.

Faced now with the same choice as then. I raise my arm, your two heart shaped lockets in hand. One act hardly balances the other. Yet, I would have you know that I have changed my friends.

Invigorated the rest of me follows, tears streaming down my face. I see it in the distance arch, confusion worn across its brow. Then the world shimmers and in turn grows dark, consumed by ink.

Within its depths swim snaking verses, given breath to bind me. Their weight hangs on me like an ocean, squeezing the air from my helm.

Though chained I keep my hand raised. My vision focused solely on the tightly clasped tokens within. I will be buried no more. Not by you, or the starving stars above.

Driving my foot to the floor I force a step, and I do so with the next and the next. With every repetition it recoils, fear soaking the air and desiccating its form. It cowers as the chasm between us shrinks, and I finally begin to see it is as you both did.

A scared child, abandoned by its parents.

Looming over it, I see reflected a sorrow that was carved by us. Burdened by shame my memories are drawn to that day, and the feeling of inadequacy that washed over all of us. If only we knew the consequences of our decision.

Lowering myself, I take my hand and rest it gently. Many years have passed since then, and I have tried as much as I can to grow as a person.

Now eye to eye I lean forward and gift them a name. They tremble as their form takes shape to match, such a simple thing it is to be defined. Holding her attention still I continue with a vow, a promise to love them the way a mother should.

For us and those above, tomorrow will be a new day unburdened by the past.