Welcome to the darkness between morning and night, you think you have a hold on it, but it chokes out the light. You think you can identify it, but that isn’t right. You go to the edge of your precipice, but that isn’t quite enough. It’s more rough and jagged than you can imagine, and more seasoned than depravity itself. It cannot be contained in a nightmare, or the encyclopedia of demonology upon the shelf. It yearns for recognition, yet not to be found. It rests near the Angels upon hallowed ground.
Welcome to the darkness after the gloaming, roaming the fields for prey. They may beg for forgiveness or mercy, but it doesn’t weigh what they say. It only assesses the inner story, one that is flawed and suspect still. It awaits the shear look of terror at the realization that there is no imposing will. The thrill from seeing the living go lifeless, and the already dead come to life, from seeing the impeccable get pecked by a hammer or knife less honorable than continuous strife.
Welcome to the darkness that has only heard of light, and is angered by the stories we tell. Laughing at those who live in heaven reaching out to those living in hell. Our eyes and our hearts both beat and are beaten, they pulse, and yet they freeze all the same. You may think the player will cheat when the darkness first thought of the game. Walking alone home from the bar, sauced enough not to drive, but too gone to run. No moonlight to guide you right which reflects the ever present sun. This darkness has a different pitch. It punches the button that reads I don’t care. It smirks when you can’t find your keys, and bellows when you feel breath on your hair. It stands behind you when your hackles go up, and rubs the goose bumps across your chest. It keeps your cries to the skies firmly locked in its breast.
The flashlight goes out in the cave, the candle flickers into a wisp. Your breath goes so cold when you realize your its slave, that it doesn’t appear though it’s crisp. It lives in the gossip of teammates. It comes between couples afloat. It waits for you behind locked gates, and it could but doesn’t go for the throat. Not usually. Not truthfully. And these are merely the houers de oeuvres to the meal, that very few see let alone take a bite. We hope in vain that it cannot be real, The multiple courses give new meaning to pain. They remain to give new meaning to fright, our loss is their gain.
It’s the dark without stars that find fault in all else, for they know they are a dying breed. It will give you time to reassess want, and more yet to ponder need. Some of them want to use you, a cover is played near the end. And as much as you attempt to choose to, you won’t be able to phone a friend. It empties the accounts, and blurs the pictures that were held as sacred in past. It reminds you not much from one life amounts, and smaller still is a single place in this world vast. The die is cast but hasn’t come to stop. It turns over, and bounces off walls. It saves the paint from the etched quotes in the stalls. It whispers give up, and it won’t matter, just quiet enough to be ignored, but loud enough to be still among chatter.
It robs you of sleep and wakes you the same. It bobs up just to the water surface, then returns to the deep from whence it came. It helps with the echo in alleys, and moves below the heap of trash. It levels off peaks, and floods the valleys, and burns my stories to ash. It isn’t one thing or one place, or someone or an act. It is at the root of the cease in night sing, a smile swiped from a face, all things come undone, and it makes the forever pact.
You may flee but run into it, and jump to avoid it as it bumps your head. And just when you begin to quit, it lets you choose to be dead. This level of darkness has substance without form, has goal but not aim, leaves us anything but warm, and calls to us by name.
The only foe it truly cannot face, is the pure introduction of light. Even then it knows the best hiding place, and can remain buried until the moment is right.