This New Nightmare
Feb. 25th, 2018 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisnewdayI didn't hear the sirens during the night, although they must have been out there. I didn't sit up, suddenly, to wonder what they were about. And for that, at least, I'm grateful.
Knowledge, of a kind, came with the light, with cars streaming by on the road outside. At first I didn't know why they were out there, so many of them moving steadily down the cross street, one house above me.
Some of them turning left, some turning right, detoured, momentarily, from their expected journeys through this life although, in the end, not separated from it.
Even then, I didn't know how close to home all of this would come. Not, as might have happened in the night, within eyesight or earshot. But closer, much closer even.
Coming, in its own way, like the sudden, horrific impact, the rolling, spinning, incomprehensible change in speed and direction, defying, almost, the laws of physics but, in the end, confirming them.
Then, the smell of raw gasoline, the ignition of it, the one, last muffled scream or groan of agony when the frantic motion, the coming apart, the falling to earth of it, finally ceased.
After that, the panicked footsteps running, running away, seeking shelter, seeking light, seeking hope that he might suddenly sit up in his childhood bed, awake from this nightmare.
Which did not happen, will never happen. All of that now lost, his childhood bed, innocence, any hope of forgiveness, at least in this lifetime, lost.
Which is what can happen when something you've decided, for yourself, takes you through another light, the one that's red, sometimes, and suddenly ends three other lives.
And you have walked away from it, thinking that you're alive, thinking that you've been spared.
Because you've not yet come awake to this new nightmare...
LPK
Dreamwidth
2.25.2018
Knowledge, of a kind, came with the light, with cars streaming by on the road outside. At first I didn't know why they were out there, so many of them moving steadily down the cross street, one house above me.
Some of them turning left, some turning right, detoured, momentarily, from their expected journeys through this life although, in the end, not separated from it.
Even then, I didn't know how close to home all of this would come. Not, as might have happened in the night, within eyesight or earshot. But closer, much closer even.
Coming, in its own way, like the sudden, horrific impact, the rolling, spinning, incomprehensible change in speed and direction, defying, almost, the laws of physics but, in the end, confirming them.
Then, the smell of raw gasoline, the ignition of it, the one, last muffled scream or groan of agony when the frantic motion, the coming apart, the falling to earth of it, finally ceased.
After that, the panicked footsteps running, running away, seeking shelter, seeking light, seeking hope that he might suddenly sit up in his childhood bed, awake from this nightmare.
Which did not happen, will never happen. All of that now lost, his childhood bed, innocence, any hope of forgiveness, at least in this lifetime, lost.
Which is what can happen when something you've decided, for yourself, takes you through another light, the one that's red, sometimes, and suddenly ends three other lives.
And you have walked away from it, thinking that you're alive, thinking that you've been spared.
Because you've not yet come awake to this new nightmare...
LPK
Dreamwidth
2.25.2018
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Date: 2018-02-26 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-26 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-27 05:08 am (UTC)