Outside

I would sit outside the heavy gates, staring reluctantly at the walls that surround the dark city. My exile seemed to last a lifetime, perhaps a few. I could hear the laughter and mourning of the beings inside, I could sense their fears and joys, but I did not take part. A leper, an outcast, I remained at the gates.

And there were the ones who came and went, and I yearned to feel for them, to break the spell, to rejoin the cycles of mankind. I had loved some of them. I had given in to one of them. And yet, I was never allowed passed the wall.

One pale morning I had sensed a storm coming. My heart overflowed with fear and anger, remorse and self pity, self loathing and selfishness. In a rage unknown to me I threw myself at the gate, fists pounding,  legs kicking, mouth screeching and eyes torn open like a gash in the glowing flesh of reality. I wept my sins aloud and ripped myself apart to demonstrate the evildoer utterly reformed, now a martyr.

But the gates remained barred and locked, heavy and solid.

For days, maybe months, I remained laying in the cold dirt outside the city. I did not weep. I did not speak. I did not feel. There, with my eyes eternally fixed on the heavily clouded sky, something within me died never to be resurrected.

Then the sky cleared, and the understanding dawned on me as something that had obviously been there since the birth of all notions. It was all so simple. It was all so lucid.

The skies laughted, ringing like millions of bells above my new found radiance, as I bent down to place the cornerstone to build a bright new city, all of my own.