i’ve had an idea floating around in my head for a couple of years now that it would be cool to write a book in second person. a friend told me i should practice writing in second person with short stories first. i haven’t had the time to devote to writing any short stories, but a little while ago i was fed up with writing essays and reading romantic era literature and i decided to let my creative side loose. all that came was a fragment, but, like with the apple picking and photography, writing it helped to clear my head and rekindle my enthusiasm. and who knows? maybe one day the practice will come in handy.

run

…and all the emptiness that has left you numb gathers itself together within you. like a beast caught in a cage it screams to be let out and you know that if you pace this floor for another sleepless night, the wild things will tear your heart to pieces.

so you take the cage into your hands and you run.

you run over the frozen river and beneath the fading frozen moon. you run beyond all imagining and all ability of thought. you run until you come to a place where there are no stars and your breath is torn from you in raging cold gasps, and when at last you collapse in the darkness on the edge of the world, you know that you have found the place where your strength is ended. there you set the wild things free to join their howling voices with the great and howling emptiness all around. 

you kneel where you have fallen and the gravel grinds into your flesh. you do not know how much blood you have lost because at the world’s end all is dark and the color of blood seems to mean nothing. and here in this absolute void of all things, here at the end of yourself, you cry out in a prayer that is made not of words but of pain and searching and fathomless heartbreak.

where

where

where

where

(over the rim of the world, a light begins to spread–or, if not light itself, a shade of black that is  lighter than the infinite void that was before)

where

where….

here.

the light grows, still too dim to be seen as light, only enough to show the color of the blood that is not yours. black ice. red blood. white snow. though the darkness howls in cold and savage billows, your breathing slows and slows and slows…

at last, here on the ice, you slumber.

when you wake, the darkness has been folded up and laid aside and light has spilled over its boundaries.