The Snare

Know after all what has become untenable, he says, when he closes his eyes, he has touched the face of a beautiful creature, has spent a moment laughing and another one enjoying the fresh scent of the sea. A distant voice and a hand pull him away, You don’t go back, don’t follow me anymore but do not go back, and he nods instinctively and pats the head he once loved and when no body can witness his deliriums, he starts again. Majestic blooms decorate his journey, as he ascends into world after world, tasting the flavors of a world not once discovered or uncovered, where a mistake can always be rewritten with the precision of a random syllable, and where he stands proud and confident and resilient against all odds. But understand, he says after a jolt, understand that where I go, I am the only master of my destiny, the only person who cares and never despairs, where children laugh and die and revive, you must understand. The voice hears everything and deduces nothing, The worthlessness here is felt for a reason, but you are blinded by inevitability, and he nods as if he understands but knows that no matter how much he fights it, he can always go back and stay where he rules and belongs. The windows are always open even in winter, and he feels no cold but the eternal forgetfulness of being a failure, but when he fails there, he can always restart and begin and travel to where he desires, have the body of the man he used to be, the one he wishes to be, or not to be. He is free to pursue what he needs enveloped in the grace of disorientation, he can always make the irrational appear in physical form, embrace him, and hold him tight through all of the tumultuous flights of a lifetime, he can marry again and again and behead himself. When will it stop, when will it stop hurting to seeing you like this?, the voice says, and he shakes his head in confusion at the thought of looking in its eyes again. I will stop when these two worlds have merged, he says and though he believes it is possible, every day that passes by, and every image that can never compare, just make it harder and harder. To fight is futile and to not fight is a crime, he says, but much better luck I will have in a better world. Before he cries again, the cloud that was so misshapen take its place and he flies above the realm of the possible, the probable, and the horrible, a little nudge and he is where he needs to be, involuntarily, with an adventure, a quest, a problem, a vacation, a relationship to amend and has a purpose with an objective, so slippery, and a way to doing things, barely passable. He laughs and laughs at his luck, that he has such life, so many lives, endless lives at his disposal, and has wasted another, ugly lifetime in one so static and decomposed. Come back, come back, and fight for the world you need, for us, and you, and many others, the voice says, but when he looks at its eyes, and finds himself restrained to the physical, he only grinds his teeth and bites his tongue at the selfishness. To be called to suffer and face against immovable, unstoppable forces, he says, sickening, as much as me whereas else I can play and worry momentarily and create to my heart’s content, and the voice cries again, and in the darkness of my beautiful dreams, I can safely ignore my betrayal, and feel the beating heart of the many bodies I will surmount.