Prompt: {You were involved in a terrible car accident and have been in a coma for the past three months. What your family and the doctors don’t know is that you can hear everything that they say. Write the scene.}

Every second felt like a dream. One of those that feel so real you ask yourself if this is actually reality…But then you wake up to the world once more. It was a dream.

What do you do when the dream turns into a nightmare? One which you are involuntarily bound to, never being able to open your eyes?

You don’t do anything.

It just keeps going like a bad joke that never gets to the damn punchline…

1 year ago…

“It seems the trauma was more severe than we thought. We don’t know when he’ll wake up or if he even will in the first place. I am deeply sorry.” The doctor said in a very doctor-like way.

“No no… Is there nothing you can do?” that was my mother.

I could almost hear her shaking. It was almost unbearable to listen to the mortified tears of my family. They thought I was gone and, for the most part, I was. For the next couple of weeks my room would be filled with people. Most of them crying. However, some days were good. They joked around, talked about their lives. They were more united than usual. At least this bad thing created a good thing.

This didn’t last very long.

6 months ago…

“Mom, how many times do we have to keep visiting Luke? Isn’t he dead?”

“Not for long son. And he isn’t dead he’s just taking a very long nap.

Us adults will decide what to do about your uncle.”

At first, hearing what was going on was a sort of relief and gave me hope. Maybe it meant that I had a chance of waking up, I thought. Then it started feeling more like a curse someone bestowed upon like some sort of joke. I didn’t have much notion of time in the state I was in. And I also was not conscious all the time. There were periods of darkness as I call it. Fitting, as it was all I “saw”. When I was lucid I overheard my parents saying how it has been a year already and that they had to make a decision even if it was difficult to bear the weight of such judgement. Not much to analyze here, they were talking about whether they should kill me, essentially.

To them I was dead already anyways.

And do I really care if they do decide to cut the cord?

I was terrified of being submerged into a never-ending darkness. A big realm of nothingness. Oblivion. The idea petrified every bone in me… Or at least it did.

I expected a decision to be made soon thereafter…

Yet here I am alive.

I had no idea how long it’s been since I heard them talking. Nobody comes to visit anymore. “They probably have a lot on their plate” I had taught myself to believe.

The silence was easy on the ears but heavy on the mind.

It was relaxing.

And relentless.

It had no mercy. It pierced deep into my core, picking at the right notes to make me cringe, shiver, wither away in the loneliness of being in-between life and death.

The silence never stopped.

Make it stop.

Please…

Indefinite time after…

“How could they leave me here by myself?”

Left alone in a ship with no sail.

Drifting between two opposite currents canceling each other out as they branch out into the light or the dark.

Darkness doesn't seem that bad anymore...

I lived

I laughed

And I cried,

Leave me now...

Until I am ash,

Let me leave

Let me die

My eyes have seen enough.

Are you lost old friend? 

Call out to me! 

Don't you dare die on me! 

I won't forgive you. 

It seemed like yesterday

We were together,

Like shield and sword

Paper and pen

Sun and moon, 

Oh my dear friend... 

Where did you go?

I woke, and you were gone! 

Only your faint footprints, 

Oh we shone

We conquered

We were unstoppable 

You and I! 

Yet you left... 

You left me! 

To fend for myself, 

It is only half a good dream

With you out of sight. 

My friend, 

I'm alone 

Bruised, 

And confounded by your departure.

We only fly together, dear friend 

How will I forge now? 

My words are not the same

Without your fiery whispers. 

Dear friend, I am not the same man

In your absence, 

For in your presence

Only then, I was whole. 

Now you're missing 

Left here alone, 

To survive...

But how could I?! 

When you are all that I know. 

Oh when it comes... 

It comes with a force. 

It grips your body, 

every inch of it, 

and injects itself into your bloodstream. 

It washes away complete thought, 

Wild, unadultareted instinct 

Becomes your main drive. 

The prey, your goal, 

The desire makes itself 

Into what you are

All you live for, 

You are no longer 

Capable of reason, 

You only know the weakening aroma of the beast called Lust. 

In a stroll down the sand of a brightly lit beach,

A wave crashes down on me

no time to think,

no time to breathe.

Each second a war,

every minute a decade,

every hour a life,

days non-existent.

Alternating between the surface

and down inside the thick water

Each tiny breath a heaven

where hell is a permanent resident.

The water retreats out

into an endless horizon

I lay atop the wet sand

Breathing,

still alive

with a single memory

of a meeting with death

postponed, but you still remember its unholy scent.

It had been a hard 3 months at Walgreens. Another day, another pair of lips with someone else’s sweet name on it. I was on the verge of expiring, and not once had I been used... What will I say to the great God in lip balm heaven? Shame is what I’ll bring, that’s what...

Well color me surprised!

Some poor sack of lips picked me up!

I’ve never been so happy in my short, mostly uneventful, life! To think, I was going to be used upon dry, maybe even cracked, lips. It was a good week or so before it happened. I had done my job. I whipped those useless lips into something kiss worthy. Now, it was time to go. Back at the factory, they had warned us about the end but I never thought it would hurt this much.

I’m almost empty.

Only a day before I expire...

I guess this is the last time he’ll close me up.

Honestly, being lip balm kind of sucks. But those shiny new lips I helped create make the sorrow all worthwhile...

Peeking eyes from above

looked down upon mine

They had worry,

they had intrigue,

but above all

they were afraid of the shadows below.

A stare so still it penetrated deep down

Into a hole,

A heavy atmosphere,

suffocated.

It was bliss for my torn body,

One enveloped in the grip of this last

layer of a voluntary hell.

I, on the other hand,

felt sorry for those stuck above.

Those tempted to take the final step

to a new world,

new visions,

an all encompassing journey into the truth,

But never took the darkness by the hand.

A truth, that not many men realize.

A truth that only those worthy will seize.

A truth so dark that it will transform your whole being.

A truth,

Only visible to those that fall into the darkness,

Into the overpowering heart of immense darkness.

Inspired by Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”

“I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.”

I stepped in without warning

Into a garden under the brightest sunlight

She was alone in that garden

With a face that only knew the cold of night

I had not ever seen a garden,

Only patches of trees ever so slight

She took big breaths of air

Leaving none for her blessed flowers

I gave some of mine

so that her garden could have air to shower

She caught a glimpse of my meddling

And with a broken smile that took all her might

She said: are you also going to say goodbye?

II

I took her by the hand

I knew we were alike,

Lonely spirits

With gardens of the same kind.

Under her sunlight green land

We blended together in silence

Creating sparks for the first time

Changing the black from our dull iris

Into vibrant new colors that sadness silenced.

III

Even under the warmth of rays of light

She and I still shivered from the cold

The cold we had from moments of darkness

Forgotten emotions and regrets of old

We feel its shadow looming over

A threat to our eternal light

However, its immature ignorance forgot

Of our garden’s force that the dark shall smite.

IV

I now know the answer to the prophecy,

It was in us all along,

That all we needed,

was each other’s company.