back alive. tiny sprig of green from the blackest earth yet. so exhausted. takes all my everything to rise above this time. drowning drowning but it’s not water, its viscous tangible hate and fear and it covers everything. sticks to me like paste, slowly dripping as I try to move around the world like an actual human being. I don’t know how long this will last. I don’t know how long I will be human and alive and awake. until it uncoils itself again, slowly twisting around my innards until I cannot breathe. leaving me no choice but to surrender. lay down in oncoming traffic, let it all wash over me and consume all that’s left.
and now, here’s the list of things that will keep the dragon quiet. so easy to check off like a shopping list. tiny little things. but the very instant it starts all those tiny things become entirely inaccessible. skyscrapers, and I am an ant. this is why there is no way out.
there are limits to human capability. I wonder sometimes if I’m just not meant to fly. not meant to survive. there’s no way, from an evolutionary standpoint, that someone like me would survive. natural selection would just wipe me out, like a Neanderthal or a woolly mammoth. Nature is exact like that. unforgiving.
the only thing I know how to do is treasure this tiny bit of sunlight I have been given, and hope that when the sprout inevitably dies, I have made the roots strong enough to survive. to live another day. I lie awake and dream.
