You sip your whiskey like a condemned man five minutes before heading off to the gallows; inhale the fumes, let its peat bog taste linger on a tongue already cracked and dry from a steady intake of anti-depressants.
I let my eyes slide sideways to catch a glimpse of your inner landscape, an endless expanse of smoking craters and gray skies where no hope shines - an astral Nagasaki. It shocks me to see the depths of despair to which you’ve sunk.
The art of melancholy is one you’ve practiced for years, with a gentle touch of humorous depreciation, but this… this… is nothing like I’ve ever witnessed, the chthonic world you’ve slipped into - this is wrong. And it makes me angry - actually - makes me want to rage against your defeat. I know you deserve better, at least, I believe you do, until we talk, and the truth comes to the fore: the beat down, the constant aural stream of No. You can’t have… No. Learn to live with less... No. The world is a terrible place... No. You are naught… These criminal aphorisms you’ve allowed to silence you, like clubs wielded by bullies against your psyche, have forced you into this no-man’s land, and silenced your humanity. What is there to be done? Is it too late for you?
What I do know: you may have found - a way out - as you drain your shot glass of its last drop, lick your lips, and smile, a true sign of gratitude, a ray of hope that pierces the black clouds gathered on your brow. You leave with your head held high, and with a grim smile plastered to your face.
Marie C Lecrivain is a poet, publisher, and ordained priestess in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the ecclesiastical arm of Ordo Templi Orientis. Her work has been published in Nonbinary Review, Orbis, Pirene's Fountain, and many other journals. She's the author of several books of poetry and fiction, and recent editor of Gondal Heights: A Bronte Tribute Anthology (copyright 2019 Sybaritic Press, www.sybpress.com).
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