With his notebook and quill in hand, Ayalal sat on the window sill, facing the warm touch of the last rays of sunlight. They threatened to blind him, as they hid behind the roofs of the houses in the city. He closed his eyes and sighed. The living sounds of daily routines flowed through the streets, sometimes soft as a breeze that stirs a meadow in the spring, sometimes rough as the waves crashing on the high cliffs that peered at the sea. They relaxed him with their unconcerned cadence.
The sudden cry of a child broke his concentration. Ayalal shuddered. Even when he tried to forget them, they came back, they always came back: the guilt, the pain, the fear… the memories that corroded his soul and threatened him.
He opened his eyes and stared at the notebook, letting the quill slide over the yellow page.
“Past retains the soul,
That Future is unable to conquer.”
With each passing day, all those feelings wished him a good-day and a good-night. It was the greeting of the dead, of those whom he had violated without violating; those whom he had bled, without bleeding; those whom he had tortured, without torturing; those he had killed, without killing. His mere existence was a death sentence for friends and innocents. And because of what?
Ayalal gritted his teeth. The sharp incisors cut and hurt the inside of his lower lip. The taste of his own blood reminded him of the day when “she”, in front of him, had slashed a child’s throat and made him drink of their blood. The little girl's panic and agony were burned in his memory, like the hot taste that had choked him and the impotence in which the shackles had sunk him.
“With it It transcribes a Present
That decays, broken”
But that was past. He looked up from his notebook and stared at the door. Beyond it was the proof of his selfishness and cowardice. His friends. He did not feel entitled to have anyone to worry about him, anyone who would put their life in danger to save him. However, he had not stopped himself from holding them to his heart, to hold in himself every defect and virtue, every expression, every word, every smile. Theirs or his.
Despite the differences between them, he owed each of them his reasons for smiling. A sincere contentment that tingled under the tears he still shed when there was no one to see them, when loneliness was the only one that greeted him and whispered a lullaby sung by a sweet memory. A remembrance that had been a dim light before everything was darkness.
“And It moans the sorrow,
While it becomes poison.”
He swallowed and shook his head. Some of the things he had lost had no return, but they still remained with him – every moment recorded where no one could extinguish them, leaden clouds from which his world rained. It was the tender gesture and the tear shed, the so sincere laugh and the fear that made him hide inside himself, it was the desire to flee and yet to face the monster that grew and spread to take the form of an angel . Each yes had a catch, each choice he took had a contradiction that hurt him shortly after making him smile.
Would it be worth insisting? This question lashed over and over against the fort he had erected inside him, each wave carrying broken fragments as it tried to reach his foundations. There had been times when it had touched them, when that question had succeeded in verging on them until almost destroying them. And at each of these times, someone had helped rebuild him, a steady, courageous hand that would not let him submerge and drown. Wings that made him fly and rise from the ground where he had fallen.
“But what right has Past
To navigate in the waters”
He put the notebook on his lap and took a hand to his chest, tightening the shirt in his hand upon his also tightened heart. Sometimes Ayalal pondered how reassuring it would be to stop feeling his heart, to let the thought crumble as the spirit drained away, to allow life to cease to be a torment. Although what guilt did he have? Guilt of thought, guilt of omission, guilt of ignorance. And he would be even guiltier if he let himself go without conquering his own will, if he let the steep mountain that was life prevent him from rising to the summit.
Ayalal took a deep breath and lowered his hand, picking up the notebook again and letting the quill continue to slide on the sheet.
“Of memory
Where It wants to drown it?”
To the “they” who gave him their hand, he owed the world. Sometimes frustration led him to forget about “them” and to think only about himself - a bad part of himself. These were his greatest failures, mistakes that Past liked to see him repeat, over and over again, erasing hope from him, sometimes hiding the Light. But the Light never dimmed, it was always holding out its hand, waiting for Ayalal to extend his to take it. Hidden in his twilight, he loved it. However, an irrational fear impregnated his heart, a dread that this Light might burn him. When, in fact, it was the Darkness that hurt him and the ghost of “her”.
“She” was fire and darkness disguised as Light, and Ayalal knew it. “She” manipulated him without having to pull the strings that move the puppets. For more than a hundred years “she” had pulled on his darkest feelings, the ones he abhorred, those that sometimes made him think of himself as a monster. Ayalal let his tongue touch the shallow cuts his incisors had made, savoring the blood again.
“What right does It has to be king
Of what is not His?”
But he was not a monster. He knew that well, and those who were most dear to him had emphasized it. He believed them. Yet belief was a challenge, a play of minds, and Ayalal had not been able to prevent “her” from being the strongest, imposing and manipulating, insidious as a serpent, every vile act massacring his spirit.
But he would not allow it any more. Ayalal recognized what he was and what he felt, recognized the Darkness that germinated at the core of his spirit, and recognized the Light that encouraged him to go on. Both belonged to him. If one day one of them conquered the other, he would not allow "her" to have a hand in it. It would be his choices that would reign, his life that would dictate the path to tread. His will.
“Because it’s mine, the soul,
Not His. I dictate”
Ayalal sighed. For this he would have to stay focused on the Present and follow his own intentions. Past would always be a mirror in front of him, of a changeable reflection; it would be a shadow on the road, but not a shadow that repressed him, not a crushing weight. Day after day, he would have to remove that burden, prevent it from holding on to him, to be Ayalal to take shelter in it: in the embraces, in the smiles, in the hopes that the memories encompassed. To take from it strength and not weakness, to open a way and trace a fate with which he could dance at dawn’s awakening.
“What is Present and what Future
Will be.”
As the ink dried, Ayalal stared at the nuances of the sky, at the last rays of the sun, and at the memories that filled him. And he smiled to the world.
“Ayalal
10.Arodus.4711”
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