Thoughts From a Severed Head

[I wrote this tonight, while I should have been sleeping, based on the 2-minute walk from the college's main building to my dorm. I decided to post it, as melodramatic as it is, just because I have nothing else to do with it. It's not supposed to be good writing, it's just what came out. Like barfing, but less gross. I seem to have switched to second person partway along, but never doubt, it is about me. The title was simply the first one I could think of; it's a line from a Nightwish song.]

It is a weird night. A wild, windy night. A night for ghosts. A night that makes me nostalgic enough to cry, but I'm not sure why or for what. A night where I want to go outside and scream and laugh my defiance, shout to all the ghosts that I am alive. But do I dare?

It's the type of night where you go out walking, just because you can, and the shadows sneak up on you and they're not shadows but ghosts and they're not ghosts but echoes and memories given solidity, your entire past rushing down on you with the force of a tidal wave. Your current love-- but is she? Your past love, your first love, your Heart's Desire-- she is suddenly there, over your shoulder, crying her lament in your ear. "Was I not perfect? Were we not meant to be? Did you not have every speck of my skin, every inch of my soul, mapped out in your blazing eyes? Then why did you let me go? Why am I now being courted by another? Why do I give court to him?" Perhaps, you think, she was not and never could be. Perhaps you had built her up as a statue of imagined marble, where in reality she was base clay. But no, your soul screams. No. There was nothing base about her.

It is the type of night where old friendships and old battles come rushing past the ears, past the eyes. Old enemies leer at you, the laughter of the group of morons who could not understand your brilliance echoes in your ears. But other laughter is there, too-- the laughter of friends come and gone. There, in Mitchell's eye--the sparkling admiration at your witty remark. But something else is there, too--is that a hint of the derision with which he'll come to treat me, in later days? And other friends, better friends, sparkle in my memory too. But over these images is the pall of sadness, the veil of tears. Why did they all leave? We used to marvel at the set of divine circumstances that brought us together, two who were so like one another when the whole world was so different. Two who would understand where no one else understood. But was there some force, equally divine, pulling us apart again? Must we always say goodbye, always and forever?

In the end, the night wins. This night, at least. I retreat, hole up in my small room--but open a window to show the night I am not afraid. Another night, perhaps, I would go out and fight, the fight that is frivolous and yet heals the soul. But this night, I am tired, and I must sleep.