You are dying. Doesn’t matter how. Feels so far away now— doesn’t it? That’s it. Take it easy. Let that last breath slip away, like the warmth that comes in a killing cold. Gentle into a silent night. No more looking up at those crowding, concerned faces; a herd of pale, pained moons. - - - - - ___________ A dark tunnel. Familiar, but not. You’re welcome all the same. Hands groping, grasping against glassy coolness, stumbling— Light. The most perfect, pure sunlight. Every idealized summer, every perfect candlelight and warming fire, all that condescend sun-sure dances across a lifetime of days. It’s mere existence is the most pristine invitation. In illumination alone it says come closer . If you had a heartbeat it would be racing. Up. Up. Forward. Scuffing, almost tripping. Surging forward, hands outstretched. You’re here. The Light. The Light It’s so— wrong . It’s purity vanished, replaced with an organic and oily sheen. Like firefly glows made rotten, morphed in the shape
You are in a dark forest. Trees entangle themselves in every direction, and the canopy is a furious mass of branches and leaves. You dwell in the gloom. The forest is vast, and deep; and wears its ages on every knotted trunk, across its treacherous roots. All that you know is it’s dimness, sheathed in fog and in doubt. You wander. There are paths. Unseen others have passed this way through the grass, left marks where their passage widened undergrowth or sheered branches. Some of it is only the tool of measly hands, already fading into obscurity when you happen upon it. But others have been industrious: cutting and sheering, great trees older than you can imagine felled like the corpses of giants. Unfamiliar sunshine peers through those malevolent gaps, as if you must gaze upon those mighty works and despair. Sometimes in the night there are voices, snatches of words you do not understand. Whispers in the undergrowth agonizingly near punctuated by unseen tread. Sometimes there are sh