Melted Chocolate - 3. Knowing

It's moments like these,
in which discomfort knows not its own name and attempts to spell it starting with a C,
that I realize that I can brave this life.
Not the one I've been leading,
but this amazing and awe-inspiring entity that I know in the biblical sense,
yet cannot begin to explain.

And knowing this life,
I am offered the gift of God that allows me to feel and to go numb,
and grants me that instant at which they occur simultaneously.
I am suddenly aware of the rapture that comes when you let the invisible droplets,
amid the visible ones,
fill your lungs,
fill your soul,
until they overflow from inside of you,
starting at the eyes,
working their way down,
and back up again,
as a sound coming from somewhere deep inside and ending its journey as it passes through your lips.

And all the while,
there is a smile on your face and a question mark over your head.
It's like when you can't smell the rain,
but if you inhale deeply enough,
you're immediately aware of the moisture in and on your body,
you can imagine the scent.

And in that moment,
it has all the same effect,
as suddenly,
memories roll over you,
like some wave,
consuming you,
reminding you of your shape and who you are.

I know this life,
as does it know me.

This life is the cold that I should feel when my clothes and my friends leave me feeling,
oh so cool.

I can feel that cold today,
I long for it,
it sates.

I am as powerless to leave this life,
as it now is to leave me.

I've been here before,
but how quickly I forget.

I've been far too occupied with buying Starbursts
trying to unfold them with my tongue,
or trying to tie cherry stems with a similar technique.

I've been too busy trying to be the warmest body in an innocent little orgy,
pretending that that was the life that now holds me in an embrace,
providing both comfort and fear.

I've been off trying to filter the white noise in my head.
I've been looking in the dictionary for what these words mean.
I've been too preoccupied with the past,
reliving what it was like to dream of becoming myself.

I was in a confused state,
that is to be sure.

But all the while,
I've been alive,
I am alive,
and this life has forgiven me for forgetting it,
just as Christ forgives me for the constant I perpetuate
just by being alive.

That fire and brimstone and damnation are my reality,
is why I feared so,
my fantasies.

But because I am only alive once,
I am no longer content.

As fearful as it once seemed,
I have to reconcile the schism within me.

To be alive,
I have to live.

To live, I have to sin.

To sin, I must atone.

And do it all again.