writing_shadows

They say time passes (I know they say it, but don't remember who they are or why they say it or what they mean, and still I want to go back to them), but I am passing through time, more slowly than I passed through the floor, and it is like quicksand, which isn't quick unless it is the sands of time and what is time except what I am passing through.

Countless times I've tried this, countless times to GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT NEVER COME BACK OUT OUT OUT but I never get out, I always get tired and he always follows until he finds me and takes me back to the cool cave and puts me back inside until I am cool not like a cucumber or like a customer but like something else entirely because I am something else entirely and he is something else, all right. But not this time, I think like I always think and am always wrong but not this time, no sir, this time I will GET OUT even if passing through time is so much effort and I have been here for so long that when I GET OUT I will be so old I will crumble into dust like Rip van Winkle or Lot's wife or the sand that blows in my face to get me to turn around and give up but I won't give up, I won't ever give up until I GET OUT and if I crumble into dust when I GET OUT then I won't have to see him ever again won't have to be in the dark won't be kept and can blow in the wind that's not like this wind that whispers where I am and works in cahoots with him and won't let me go.

I will GET OUT if it's the last thing I do, and it may be the last thing I do because I have been here forever and I haven't had any food or water or sleep or love except the obsessive love of the tyrant (if someone ruling only one other person is a tyrant and I say they are) who trapped me and I don't like that kind, I want the kind they gave me, the people I need to GET OUT for, the them I don't remember but can't stop thinking about, the them who should hate me but won't, and I'll give it back to them, and they'll give me food and water and sleep and they will keep me safe even if I am dust because that's love and this is bullshit and I can't stand it any more, I don't care if I'm tired this time, I don't care if I push myself like a panicked horse until I collapse and die, I have to I have to I have to and this time you can't stop me.

The land is working against me, and it isn't even being subtle about it any more; the sand's in my eyes mouth nose and throat, the wind's in my hair, the scrub is scrubbing me and I bleed and I weep and I suffocate

and

I

GET

OUT.