With delusion, the truth was mutilated.

I learned what it’s like to want to die so badly that the only thing holding me back from the song of the half-frozen pond was this voice that was whispering to me. It was a whisper so quiet that sometimes I couldn’t even hear it over the sound of my own breathing. And then sometimes I heard the song of the pond, beckoning me to drown in its depths. Come here and die, it said. Come here, and everything will be beautiful.

And when I listened long enough it changed into another song. First it was a song that suffocated me with its sadness. Then it became angry, and then it became mellow, then furiously loud, then soft and persistent, then hideously ugly, then hauntingly beautiful. And it was so beautiful that it left me in awe of its beauty; gasping at something that was too much to take in, too much to comprehend. And then it slowly faded away, and nothing meant anything anymore because the music was gone.

When I stared at the sky long enough I saw the treetops scraping against the muted stars. One by one the clouds sailed away. One by one the stars lit up. They flickered and flashed. They danced to the song of the frozen ice. They shone down on the dew drops and cast light on the grass. They laughed with me, and I laughed with them. They blazed with a fire so blindingly bright that I was left feeling very small.

Very small, indeed.

I swallowed the ocean. It was raging inside of me, an angry hurricane, a tempest that destroyed the whole world; a whirlpool that sucked every breath of life and every shade of color into its bottomless depths.

I took a knife and sliced open every vein in my body. I screamed for every drop of blood. I shrieked with pain; I writhed in agony. The blood was so bright I wondered if I had become a star myself. The red was so crimson it stained everything I saw. And then it changed; darkened. It became so dark that the stains became ashes and my dried blood became coal.

Then I screamed.
I screamed in the emptiness,
but my own voice couldn’t pierce the silence;
and my tears froze, and the world was winter,
and i heard no reply.