Motherless

Did the poet come first, and then the sorcerer, or was it the other way around? Motherless, I was museless; so into the darkness I fled to hide this secret from the revelation of light. Every gauntlet run had been run in light. To lick my wounds, to heal, I sought the deepest, darkest burrows, places in which to hide, to find my solace. So frequent were my battles, the places of my ensuing refuge remembered me as I remembered them. Often with scarcely enough room to turn around, too dark for shadow, but light enough for the perception of depth, feeling the spiders, I spoke to them in whispers; and when on my face, and eye to eye, they echoed not my supplications, but tendered commiseration. In darkness, my thunder murmured; in light, my silence screamed. It was the spiders, very likely, who, feeling my welcome exhausted, or feeling inadequate for the task of soothing the hurt of one so broken, kindly suggested that only in brightness might there be healing. To end the struggle, and yet incapable of war, facing an adversary I could never vanquish, I had to go at any cost. Why is it that children run away from home with nothing, trusting, knowing; and adults return there, their tails between their legs? Childhood is spent learning to be brave; adulthood, learning how to fear. My precociousness, my fearlessness, deploring all that like dull, grey wire wound tightly around the heart, constricting breath, stifling, asphyxiating, perceived no choice but to escape; defiantly, to burst the membrane that would if persisting kill me; to penetrate and to deflate the anima of my discontent. At last, with new-found purpose, I emerged. My courage had never flagged. I had only to discover the first step preceding the next step. Alone I would remain. To ensure that self-determination, it would be imperative to shock. Most striking would be that which was least expected.