sinner and saint.

it is always nights like this where everything is so quiet you can hear beneath the absolute threshold, when i begin to wonder if i am going mad. technically, if one were to be truly losing their mind, they wouldn’t take much notice to the clarification that their reality is nothing but intricate lies spun by their brain. but pushing on, i can feel it. a whisper of a dance in memory slices gracefully across my cheek. the hungry caress of a lost lover. it is a random number between three and four, counting the days of sleepless solitude, and my lover is playing tricks on me. it is just before dawn, but the house breathes and groans like a wretched soul trapped in a bottomless pit long before midnight. in the gray morning light, delicate wrists stained with ink serve as maps through a desolate labyrinth. lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.  from the corner of my eye i see shadows of uncharted men that feed upon the protective covering that encases us and separates our world from theirs. a shield at best, a doorway at worst. try and detach your eyes from their persistent, wandering gaze, and you might just catch a glimpse of a shadow gliding out of sight. don’t second guess yourself sweetheart, you know exactly what you saw. shadowy figures just slightly out of reach, but still quite visible- gliding silently around whispering quietly to those surrounding. when looking directly at the figures, it seems there is a gauzy lace weil delicately making and covering each shadow.  unseen claws shred the thin barrier until it is tattered and torn. one by one, little by little, each figure begins to sharpen until they are in perfect vision. as you slowly inch back, eyes unblinking with disbelief, their voices are no longer whispers. each opens their mouth, drowning you in hollow prattles; screeching rasps; deep grimaces; and cruel high pitched icy sneers and laughter. petrified with terror and shock at the shadow’s newfound ability to speak, you acutely notice that the house is creaking and wheezing. you can hear footsteps on the opposite side of the house, and then they are gone. with this, you must take into consideration that i have spent far too long with eyes wide shut, drowning in utter fear fueled by morbid curiosity for this world, things seen and heard. each is a cancerous tumor mutilating my mind beyond repair. to me, the shadow figures’ tattered veil appears to be a doorways, a portal to another universe. which in itself spawns the magnitude of infinite and parallel universes. much like the shifting hallways concealed in an e(in)ternal labyrinth. within this never ending maze, man is forced to wander blindly from birth to death; where he then circles back around to his exact place of previous birth, where he is born again. condemned to blindly roam and repeat his unbroken cycle for all eternity. in this labyrinth we are all gods, and we are all monsters. each creation story is universal, yet individual to each new life. the sinner and the saint are both born into divinity.