Some time ago, a woman with a gun in her hand demanded of me and my companions that we provide good reasons why life is worth living. Otherwise she was going to terminate us.
I thought to myself: "This is the very question that I've struggled with for so long and now I am being forced to provide a definitive answer. Do I make up some fancy reason and thus escape with my life? But if I lie, then my life is not really worth pursuing."
In the distance, I saw my friends getting finished off - obviously their answers weren't good enough.
It was now my turn. I came in and faced the interrogator. In a voice devoid of any tone she commanded me to present my case.
"Life is hard, really hard sometimes", I replied to her, "and a lot of times I don't want to go on struggling against the unyielding, overpowering forces. Yet I want to continue living. That is all I can say. I want to live."
The interrogator gazed at me with an empty look, a look lacking any human expression, deciding on her answer.
Just as she was about to make her pronouncement, I woke up to life.
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Comments: 11
Best,
Pamela
Editor of Shine! An Online Journal Of Flash
http://escape.to/shine
kind of simple
but ill think about it tonight...
your words will lead my path to sleep
thank you.
Rather morbid, Boris. My kinda stuff!
I've read this several times over the last few weeks. I needed to anchor in here to the home front, the place that's known my darkest times, before I could clearly respond to this whammer of a piece.
I've had the opportunity to be done several times in this life, three times when my resolve to be "not" was stronger than the desire for life. Each time when death was with in my grasp, it was the beauty of some cherished grief and being able to feel it's bitter sweet olive colored bruise that's instilled desire to live. Letting grief soften my core, up through the crust and out onto the surface.
Parenting gave me an aeronauts basket, infused with sound and rhythm, the heartbeat of future informed by past; a double cul-de-sac. One side future, one side past with my tiny moment hinged in the middle.
It was learning that life is a conscious choice that was truly liberating. I wouldn't have that if I hadn't found my way through death.
so I just keep sucking in deeper and deeper....then... breathing ...outwardly with shallow sincere control, and then I whirl...........