Spirit fled the body, took shelter in the mind.

I wondered if something grave had happened to me.

My spirit had relinquished itself, in an ancient tear of cataclysmic proportions. Torn at the core, a great fissure. Grinding teeth, whispered tears of a child in the darkness. Body from spirit. My spirit fled to unknown refuge. Stomach turning somersaults that never landed. Spinning and spinning until severed, and the momentum increased with time... because the physics of the soul don't follow the physics of the world. Because the greater the numbness, greater the pain, and in turn, the greater the numbness, and the greater the pain...
Imbalance fuels itself. Little chance of return.

And in the process my spirit lost awareness of itself. Lost awareness that there ever was a loss.

Because that is the nature of loss of self.
Was there something to crawl back to? Was there ever certainty, foundation? Was there, was there...

At times I gleaned a glimpse from somewhere within. A sensation shivering through me, a forlorn knowing that the pain of numbness was real. A tension so terrifyingly immediate in my muscles it snapped back to numbness. And the drowning in my eyes turned to back limpness, paralysis from pain.

And they mistook the paralysis for peace.
Paralysis for peace...

I would wonder, wonder... muted dreaming. "Perhaps there was some great evil that occurred, in my past, knowledge of which will save me yet. Perhaps my pain will be vindicated and I will know why, why... why I wonder why..."
Perhaps the ghostly images with whispy trails, and the shadowy warped blurs at night, and the shrieks ricocheting in my mind were real...

The eternal mocking silence of such thoughts. The derision of emptiness, the scorn of the internal void.
"You sick fuck, you wish for such evil upon yourself to perpetually justify your inability to cope with pain. You are weak."

And the horror of that thought would return me to the limp paralysis.
The eternal mocking silence.


But finally the searching, the searching, the clambering, the faint embers life still licking and burning in my eyes found something.

A memory, a vindicating memory, finally told. Imparted to my sister, in it she saw her life too, her own memories restored. The same ghostly hands, terrors of the night...


And soon my spirit climbed out of its shell. One day the sparks of the embers caught. Alight. One day I felt the return of my soul.

"I did it."
"Did what?"
And my sickening pain reared inside myself, and this time my soul tremoured, joined, fleshly impact. It returned.
Just a split second.

But I cherished it, and held onto it, and grappled to return to it, to the reassociation.

At whim, I can induce it, the spells of being inside my body.
But it does not stay...


It never stays...