I have been wandering through a forest.
A dark forest, hidden away in the back of my mind.
A grey fog permeates the trees like rippling waves of water.
It clouds my vision; I can only see a small radius around me.
The air is wet and leaves scatter the ground under my feet.
I cannot see the stars .
I do not think stars exist in this world.
And yet, most of the time, I find peace in this place.
The crunching of the dried-up leaves puts me at ease.
No one is here with me, but remnants of life remain: in the birds that flutter through the skies, the creatures that rush through the brushes, and the many butterflies that land on my shoulder.
I pause to look at them.
Yellow, blue, green and pink.
Some as big as my palm, some as small as my thumb.
I find myself here when I am tired.
When I sleep and dream of another world.
Away from people, alone with thoughts.
It allows me to reminisce and think.
Of my childhood years. My teenage years. My adult years.
From the beginning to the end.
Each time I wander, a butterfly with violet stripes flutters to me and lands on my shoulder.
I look at her and smile and try to stroke her wings. She flutters away.
In her place comes a rose-petal butterfly
I let her rest on my shoulder.
Sometimes, I wonder if she ever wakes up before I do.
In the waking world, a man still lurks in the shadows, behind doors and down hallways.
He hides behind picture frames and peeks from the corner of my eye.
Even when I am tired and I close my eyes, he appears in my forest, motionless, far away by grey river banks with flowing streams tainted blood-red.
I cannot observe his expression, for the fog hides it, yet I know that he stares at me.
He always does.
He always has.
And sometimes, whilst walking through the forest, I see crutches lying beside trees and smell Grandma’s cooking through the wind.
She sits at my bedside, in a pretty wooden frame.
Be a strong man.
I would not, could not, look her in the eyes, ever since that day.
I didn’t meet her until after her funeral, when I heard from a family friend that she was buried next to my mother.
I learned from someone else of the man’s death after.
How he had become a smoker.
How he had been drunk driving.
How on that day, with tears clouding his vision and hands bleeding, hearing mother’s cries echo down the street, calling for him to stop, and the weeping of his broken child beneath him– his child who wished to be different, to be normal –the street lamps beckoned him on, down the road, towards the lights, a final embrace for his desperate soul.
“Why me?” He must have thought. “Why me?”
People sobbed as they told me of his death.
How he was a good man.
A man who’d do anything for his family.
I could only look at them and smile, knowing that he had wanted to die, had wanted me to die.
And so I am wandering through the forest,
Alone, and slowly contemplating
Whether I should have taken the wheel instead.