What's Strangest?

Finding peace in oblivion

Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash

Inspired by the words of Rainer Maria Rilke:

We must accept our reality and all its immensity

Everything

Even the unheard of

Must be possible within it

This is, in the end, the only courage required of us

The courage to meet what is strangest and most awesome

~

It’s strange to face death

And not panic

Instead, oozing slowly down the drain of despair

Unable to grab on for dear life

Just calmly floating with the current

Watching all I hold dear, slip away

Like the fading image of a projector screen returning to black

There is no agonizing wail

No tears

No regrets

Just an acceptance that all has been lost

While my mind accelerates

Seeking solutions

Hacks

Detours

Anything to avoid

This

I swallow my words

and my prayers

Become weather patterns

That bounce around my insides

Unable to traverse the boundary of flesh

And resonate in places where they can actually be heard

Listened to

And granted

I am responsible for life

And death

And I have no control over it

Whatsoever

Here, in the liminal space

Where blinking at the wrong moment

Or shifting my weight could send us

To a place from which there is no return

All I can do is watch

I soak in the moment like dried herbs

All of my vital essence

Extracted

To become something

More potent

More useful

Than i could have conjured

This is how it ends

Without fanfare

Without remorse

Just revelation

A peeling back the layers of reality

Until the borders and divisions that once seemed

Cemented

Are now as porous as this skin which perspires and absorbs

All that swims in the atmosphere

Whether toxic or nourishing

What I am able to do with it

No longer matters

Just the reckoning

That I have always been

A sponge

Incapable of hiding from my fears

Or containing them within

This imaginary house of flesh and bones.