The Silverfish

Lying in a womb of soft wetness, I see streaks of white chasing each other in a vast blueness. Life rushes through me in cold waves, teasing me, keeping me alive, but only for minutes. The streaks keep getting distorted, but I am unable to determine if they really are changing shapes, or is it my vision failing me. I try to turn around, I toss around, trying to change my view, but it never does. All I can see is white streaks in a vast blueness.

A cold fire is devouring my skin. Life seems to be gushing out of me. I try to hold on to it, but it seems impossible. I open my mouth wide open, as much as I can, as if to suck in all the life around me, to stay alive, but all I get is the same cold fire burning me inside. The white streaks carry on.

The white streaks suddenly start changing shapes, recognizable ones. I can see myself in those shapes, and some more like me. I know this. Its my own life being played in front of me. The cold fire has become fierce, uncontrollable. The waves of life rushing are dying out. They just tease me from a distance now, not coming forward to sooth me, not touching me anymore.

The soft wetness is drying out, becoming hard, harsh, hurting me. I try to move to somewhere more comfortable, but my body doesn't bear with me, refuses to move at all. My eyes are not in my control anymore. They move fast, randomly, but still, the view never changes, its the same white streaks in a vast blueness.

The cold fire has become unbearable now. Its has seeped through my skin, into my very being. Every nerve in my body seems to be burning with it. Suddenly, a chill takes over my body, and I go numb. Completely numb. No more burning, no more pain. No more sounds, just a soft white light, immense peace, and numbness. Finally, I die.

Tethered to a thin sliver of light, as I rise above the world, I see myself, lying lifeless, still, covered with bits of sand, lying on the shore, my silver scales glitter and the shimmer like the sand itself. But death leaves no beautiful marks. My mouth open, as if trying to suck the whole world in, my eyes, stony, dead, blood shot with all the frantic rolling. I see a huge wave rolling on the surface of sea. As it breaks on the shore, it drags my body along with, into the ocean, into the sea, into the very world where I was born and survived, the very world where I had wanted to live, the very world I longed for when I was dying... a divine funeral may be.

At the heart of the tornado...

Years of struggling within has come to a standstill, questions stirring the turmoil have for the moment faded away, the shrilling noise has dissolved away into a distant silence, that envelopes the vast emptiness beneath the dark brooding clouds, the tornado has finally stopped.

Poised between a moment of violent flurry and and a moment of sublime peace, the tornado pauses and watches as streaks of light travel and break through the clouds in a slow dance of ruptures and explosions.

The tornado waits, looks on to the slowly appearing sun. The heart has now begin to stir, in a calm swirl-pool of colors and dreams, the furry rises again. The tornado is still waiting. It writhes and wrenches, muffling the screams of its agony, fighting against the heart, holding on to it.

The swirling gets faster and faster, pulling the wind along, the tornado screams, louder and louder. Mad streaks of lightning scorch the tornado and agitate it from within... the flurry rises and rises, going out of control, breaking through.

With a shriek that echoed through ages, the tornado explodes into a deluge of bright colors. Speckles of dreams drift through pillars of light breaking through the clouds. The tornado is still there, still waiting, calm, and patient, as time comes to a halt, and dreams move on.

I just wait.

In my fantasy, I have a butterfly. As it flutters, grains of light shed from its wings and add to the brightness of my horizons, but do nothing to the darkness of my sky.

The sky remains perennially dark. Occasionally lightened up when the silver clouds above throw sparks of greetings to the grains of light at the horizon, the sky remains, dark.

The butterfly flutters and flies, settling here for a moment, hovering there the next. The winds tremble to the beatings of the wings and shake the walls of my world. But the butterfly goes on, oblivious to the tremors its causing, the butterfly continues to hop and fly.

I stand in a dark corner, and wait. I feel the powdery light falling and slipping over my closed eye-lids. And as I open them, the soft brightness of the horizons entice me and capture my attention. But then, the butterfly... the butterfly.

It captures my senses and my imagination, enveloping me in a mist of soft brightness. I follow it around, even with my eyes closed, and my ears full of music, and my mind in a whirlwind of emotions, I can sense it, I can feel it, I keep running behind the fluttering wings of light... never getting nearer, but never falling behind, I go on running.

I am out of breath now. I stop, I wait, I breathe, I look up. The butterfly hovers above me for an instant. I turn my face up and close my eyes. I feel the particles of light falling and slipping over my closed eyelids, and I sense the butterfly flutter away, not caring whether I follow or not. I stop.

I turn around, look at the horizon, look at the sky, and the streaks of lightning. And over the distance, I still see the butterfly, fluttering, flying, settling for an instant and flying again. I don't try to follow the butterfly anymore.