Refraction

It's hard to come back from it, the edge of whatever your hope once was, to overcome the impetus that made you lose your footing and dangle from precipices to begin with. Harder still because you put yourself there, in some misguided, self-affirmative step toward individuation. Grimacing through the pain of it all, your mantra: all for the best, all for the best. Words ring empty--if at all--when vocalized, but still, must be repeated for continuity's sake, must be repeated ad infinitum, must be repeated until you start to believe it. You stay active in body and mind, so the totality of you will persevere, past bumps in the road and rough patches and stormy seas and a thousand other cliches. Slowly, you claw your way back, because you want to or because you have to. You seek redefinition of what you'd perceived, and recontextualize yourself within the new construct. Although you've swept them up before, shards of shattered hopes remain, insidious, piercing your bare feet just when you thought you'd found them all. But you're tough. Callused, in protection from renegade vestiges of something you thought was possible. In daily life, you cultivate steeliness, deny your warmth and flexibility. You're still you, craving the clamor of contact, the intensity of perceived or actual intimacy. But it's safer here. There's no room for interpretation in metals and no heartbreak in stone. It's only temporary. You know it is. As if there were an expiration date on sadness. You feel it in the air like pollen, an irritant that heralds the spring thaw. You rotate, earthlike, on your axis, yet not feeling like the world does or should revolve around you. But the motion is constant, and constitutes progress. There are others now, refracting prismatically, sometimes dazzlingly shiny. Shielding your eyes, you wonder if you'll ever see inside, and if the interior is as opulent as the exterior seems. But at least it's something new to look at.