In the rigidity of her chair she blends in, all corners and angles. Her body, a strong icy float in the vastness of the Arctic ocean. Her mind, a steely pile unreachable to the swiftest of waves. Her eyes, reminiscent of a paling blue dawn.
The onlooker labels her a statue, an empty, ancient artifact, born of art and bled dry by the eyes of the world. Only she knows her delicateness, her true weakness. It would take one knife, one stab, to pierce her malleable disposition. The clay of the statue hasn’t dried yet.
She is still vulnerable.
She has passed through the greedy hands of low and high society alike, greedy hands eager to tarnish her pure beauty. They filled her with their darkest thoughts, beat and kneaded into her their cruelest, most sickening intentions. They made her theirs: marked her up, erased her past, passed her around like an object of their collective, disturbing humor. She wanted to hide, to run and never come back.
But she couldn’t.
Clay can never tire of the artist. And the artist never retires from the clay.
One more pinch, one more prickled jab….
The silks of time slip through her grip, however tight she may grasp at them. Life has gotten her down too many times, and even clay doesn’t stay soft forever. It will harden, and when it hardens, she must be perfect. And to be perfect, she must be empty.
She needs them to believe in her emptiness. If they believe, even just for a second, so can she. If she can fool the world, she can without a doubt fool herself.
After all, is it not better to be empty? To have emotion is to err, to have an affinity for pain. With emptiness, there is no strife: no debate between joy and despair, just pure, unadulterated silence.
And in this silence she hopes to derive her peace. For silence is better than the inner screams, cries, shouts, of her soul. The paling of the dying man’s soul holds no anguish, only undulating waves of bliss and the peace to come.
Better to be devoid than to have to avoid. Better to be faceless in the crowd, silent in prayer, ever-drifting, ever-searching, ever-wanting. Want is better than taunt. When you lack, no one expects; when you don’t, it’s you against the world.
Better to stand for nothing than to stand for all. Better to have no choices, than to be plagued with choice. Right?
Wrong.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
She knows it. It’s all wrong.
To fade in and out of existence is to scorn the gift of life, to spit in the face of something truly beautiful.
Her charade cannot last. Even now, in her perfect rigidity, lays a flaw. In the action of being empty, she makes a choice. The rejection of choice is a choice. She knows it. But she has no choice. The pain is too much. The clay of the statue is scored, roughened up, cracked. No sun ever shone upon it, only the heavy darkness.
She wishes this upon no man or woman. She is also someone’s daughter, someone’s beloved.
You shouldn’t have to ever be her. She does not wish this for you.
To know no joy, no happiness, is the curse of the dead.
The living must partake on a different path, until their due time comes.
Run, don’t walk.
Run fast enough, and you will fly. Find the sun, the breeze in the trees, the softness in another’s arms, the beautiful melody of the sky.
Find the joy. Lead others to believe in it.
And then maybe, just maybe, you’ll believe in it too.
– Pihu J.