Balance

I clasp my hands together and the world sluices across my skin, roiling above the surface of my body and billowing past into the empty void that lies behind me. I have bound the shades of ages within my blood and bone, and my whispered word sets the wind to howling. I am the elemental fury, the rock of ages, the soft caress of long-dead lovers flickering endlessly across the skin on my ribs, the gap between arm and body, the blink of my eyes.

I can be slain so fucking quickly, like, lightning fast, y'know? The world is full of moving metal that could crush me in a heartbeat, the blood spurting forth from my delicate eyes, rupturing that skin that sluices the world, releasing the shades entombed within the confines of my head all over the rusted machinery - and it might even be piloted by another sack of meat, mingling with me in the offing. Or I might fall from a great height and allow it all to escape that way, or I might simply grow old and the paper-thin shell might falter for the briefest of instances but that's all it takes, that's all it would take because externally I am deceptively simple but the myriad of internal processes required to keep the Devil's fire and God's love and the endless atrophying weight of my own personal history at bay, let alone keep me fucking functional from day to day, well, they're so complex and so fucking dependent on one another that I could drop dead tomorrow simply from the wrong kind of chemical, or the right kind in the wrong place, or not enough of the right kind, or whatever. Imbalance. Imbalance will doom me, whether it is a fatal amount of my insides on my outsides, or a fatal amount of the outside inside.

I flex my fingers and the world pours out of the fingertips, bubbling and broiling it's way out as I force it out with the sheer amount of will I can pour into my hands. Internal processes shift and waver, continental drift is replicated within the human frame, and I harness all of that energy, all of that fucking instability, all of that uncertainty and certainty and blind optimism and spiritual awareness and I pour it into the world in front of me that sluices over my skin and energizes me. For the briefest of instances I fancy that the world that rolls gently over the contours of my body is improved by what I have poured out of myself into it, and then I realize that the only reason I do this is if the world ahead feels slightly different, the void behind me isn't as deep, isn't as dark, and isn't as distracting. And then all the colour, all the fire, all of the brightness drains out of the air that caresses my skin and I am left a creature of imbalance, of the void, of an internal process failed, of a memory unexpressed, a puppet to the shades of ages and prey to the emptiness that lies behind me.

I will have balance, and if I cannot have balance, I will fall. There is no two ways around this. I will have balance. There is a perilous drop behind me and a perilous flame in front of me, and I can't pour myself into one or the other. I will fade, or be consumed. I just have to find a way to stand between the two.