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A Long Continuance ©️

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I entered dark matter last night. Not through dream or prayer but through a crack in the membrane that holds what we call real. It was quiet at first — the kind of quiet that means pause not peace, like the world taking inventory of every wrong turn ever made. Shapes emerged, soft and luminous, not light but the idea of it. Despair pressed against me, a sensation foreign to the man I’ve become. I knew this wasn’t mine. It belonged to the collective — to everyone who ever said could have been and never was.

The air was thick with unspent emotion. Lies drifted like pollen, attaching themselves to thought until truth became unrecognizable. A lie has no memory. It lives only in repetition, feeding on attention. It doesn’t rot; it recycles. It surrounded me like a field of static, whispering promises that never needed keeping. I watched them pulse and fade, fuel without flame. Dead light from dead stars.

I stood perfectly still. The more still I became, the more it seeped into me — that ancient petroleum of regret. It’s easy to confuse darkness for depth, to think you’re plumbing the soul when you’re really sinking into the waste of countless unfinished prayers. Fighting it only grants it texture, form, relevance. You have to see through it without naming it. To name it is to give it gravity. To observe it is to reclaim sight.

Eventually, I could read the patterns. They were written in motion, not language — a rhythm of collapse and renewal. Everything that had never found its home was mapped there. Old love lived there. Abandoned joy. The unchosen. The unforgiven. Souls floated in the current like insects trapped in amber, timeless, beautiful, doomed. They were not being punished; they were simply unfinished. I reached toward them, and the darkness shimmered as if remembering sunlight.

Then came the moment. The release. To transcend that place, you must cut the cord — not out of cruelty but mercy. You let go of the idea that you can redeem what was never meant to be redeemed. You hand back the burden to the collective and keep only the lesson: that despair is borrowed, not owned; that love unexpressed does not die but disperses; that nothing truly lost was ever yours. When I cut the cord, the dark matter receded, retreating into itself like ink into water.

What remained was silence again, but this time it was mine. The kind of silence that hums — not absence but alignment. I looked around and saw faint initials carved into a tree. They weren’t names, just echoes of presence. Maybe mine were there too, from another life or another version of this one. I didn’t need to check. The point wasn’t to read the carving. It was to remember that it existed — proof that even in the void, something once loved the light enough to write its name.

Freebird (Slight Return) ©️

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The air is cold and crisp, cutting across the mountains like a blade. I rise with the dawn, the world beneath me still wrapped in its gray quilt of mist. My wings stretch wide, every feather catching the sun’s first light, and I push off from the crag, dropping into the sky like a stone before the wind catches me, lifting me higher.

Far below, the river glints like a serpent winding through the valley. I tilt my head, scanning the water’s surface. Trout flash and leap, unaware of my shadow drifting across their world. Pine trees huddle close along the banks, ancient and patient, the wind whispering secrets through their boughs.

A hare darts from one shadow to another, ears pricked, heart thundering. I see the swaying grasses tremble where it passes, but I am not hungry. Not yet. My stomach is still warm from yesterday’s feast—rabbit, caught on the slope where the wildflowers grow. I circle high, content to glide, tracing the ridges and folds of the earth like an old map I’ve long since memorized.

Far off, a rival calls—sharp and piercing, slicing through the morning quiet. I bank left, turn my head, but do not answer. The sky belongs to no one. Not me, not him. Let him hunt where he pleases. The ridge belongs to me. I’ll not waste energy on games today.

Clouds gather on the western horizon, their bellies swollen and dark. Rain will come by dusk. I’ll return to the nest before then, the high branch where the wind can’t touch me. My mate will be there, feathers rustling, our chick already squawking for its next meal. I’ll bring him a fat trout, something easy to catch. He needs to grow strong, needs to know the way the wind bends around the mountains.

A flock of crows gathers below, tearing at some carcass left in the clearing. Bold and loud, they squabble, scattering in every direction when I dive—just a warning, just a reminder. They have their place, and I have mine.

I rise again, carried by the updraft, and watch the world move slowly beneath me. The deer step softly through the grass. A fox slips into the thicket, nose low, tail brushing the earth. My eyes trace the river’s bend, the far edge of my territory, and I know every stone, every shadow.

The sun climbs higher, warming the world, and I drift lazily, eyes half-closed, ears open to the hum of the wind. I belong here—woven into sky and stone and the wide, whispering valley.

When I finally turn for home, the wind cradles me gently, and I let it carry me. I’ll sleep with one eye open tonight, high above the ground, while the rain drums softly against the leaves, and the river dreams its way through the dark.