CRASH

A violin was telling a sad tale and I lived it. Do you hear the cricket's cry their sad lament? They sing, you find me not, you find me not! My love finds me not! Yet a lonesome cricket still chirps, still hopes somehow. The sun was just rising but I had risen long before it, the sun rises in joy and strength but I... I rise to spread the stain of salt and water down my checks. Play, play on my violin and make the clamor of my soul reality to my ears so that I might understand it. I slowly danced to the tune which beat inside my heart, singing softly, "Relax, take your time... Trust me and you will see... infinity." How long had I been promised that now?

I remembered... My father was laughing at the time, and mother was hiding somewhere. My big sister, her brave soul protected me, she was shrieking. Thwack! Thwack! Crack! CRASH! Stop, my child brain had demanded, stop it! You can't love us, you can't... not like this. And he didn't and doesn't. I'm just glad my sister escaped the hell of that house, I escaped to a different hell altogether. My friends were druggies, my family alcoholics, and my mentors criminals. There was no childlike innocence within me, no spark of hope divine or life care-free. Infinity? I'd forgotten the definition.

My sad dance of memories and sorrow led me to the bathroom. Ah, my strongest enemy, the with the sharpest tongue. My father had not been a kind man, nor my mother an encouraging woman, my friends had placed me at their feet to appear larger in their own eyes, and... all the world threw me to ashes. But no one compared to the sheer belief of a mirror. I stared in scorn and hate and contempt. Dash away violin! Scream out your vile anger in twisted cords and snap your bow upon the shredded strings! What was it I saw in the mirror? An abomination of a girl, hardly deserving the to bear the female sign. Gaunt and gangly, uncouth and ungraceful, and above all else altogether unlovely. The mirror also hated me, for it had not shattered from my visage out of spite. Oh yes, infinity was real but only as a negative reality. Infinite putrescence!

I wiped my mouth from the vomit and dared not to remember how many pills I had taken to get a hold of myself. I couldn't stop moving, couldn't stop for a moment breathing. But I had a semblance of control at the least. The violin was distant, like I was dead and buried already and it played on the other side of the casket for my passing. Hello world, let's pretend life again. I remembered how to smile and say, "Good morning." They actually meant their well wishes. I made an attempt to eat in order to make them feel like I was being a "good girl", I made my cricket cry in my heart and said nothing of my pain. Find me my love, find me my infinity. Come softly, my violin and speak to me of poison and a slow death of the dead already.

I took a walk in the park and thought about my many imperfections. I wanted and deserved death, I lied, I cheated, I drank and smoked and cut. And life punished me for it, I was beaten and betrayed by everyone to the most foul of degrees. Them I forgave already, because I knew I deserved all those and worse. And made my life amount to a slow torturous punishment. The sun was warm and the wind cool and the day perfect around me. I wanted to cry, why cannot you agree with me? I've made my infinity already, I diligently crafted it over time and with care and thought. Why didn't you let me drink the cup of sorrows I so arduously mixed?! Shriek, violin! Wake infinity for me and bid Him answer me!

"Cold hearted orb that rules the night!" I crowed at the sunny sky, "Let me decide what is right!" Silence replied my tantrum. Silence and I could stand no more. Not the silence, please. Where are you my violin? My cricket's cry for love? I wept in frustration, my muse, my music. My heart still had a song to sing, but no instrument to vent the song with. No more self deception, no more illusions. That's what the silence was to me. "Mercy!" I begged, though I wanted justice more than mercy. Every time I had cried for mercy in the past...

The mirror again, in my brain this time. Why the mirror?

*Little facets that there be, little crannies hard to see. Mirrors only see by light and light by life of power and might. Mirrors slice more keenly than swords and rebuke more potent than kingly words. Yet they make more beautiful than otherwise could be and bring a truth to the lies of the unseeing.*

Who spoke? Can it be? "What would you have of me my mirror? What can I offer to satisfy your unswerving gaze?"

*A perfect mirror always demands to reflect that which it is in all that stands. The world itself is not enough to match the silvered sight, but one who lived within below did live to be that light.*

Must I always be so humbled? To accept the beauty of another and not create my own, to let another drink a cup so perfectly mixed with sufferings in my place. To nail all imperfections and curses, all addictions and habits, and every other dark beast which resides within my heart upon him, must I always stay so contrite? Yet I have been in ashes already, I have been in squalor and humiliation... What difference is it to me that I finally become what I am? But a mere girl fashioned for the beauty of another. For years I lived like one who listens to the keening cry of death upon his laughing and pale mount. I could not but weep at the sound of the fires of Hades rising so hastily to my feet! I flew away, sinner that I was, for it was not then death that scared me half so much as life!

*Life again springs to you, do you dare to then renew? Accept this beauty for your own and ascend only to kneel at a throne.*

I, did and accepted fully and cried your pardon for me and requested your beauty on me! It was then that the image in the mirror went through many changes, showing a life and a death and a life eternal. Then, when it hung in the air of my mind like an everlasting symbol, it crashed and shattered.

*No more mirrors of judgment be, merely mirrors for refinement of thee. Laugh and dance and sing and grow for to you this mercy has been known.*

Dt