I have surrendered up my words to fear, and succumbed to silence. Let the dark take my songs and twist them, tear them out of my hands and throat and hurl them away. Fear of that very silence has driven me to it. Fear that there was nothing left to say. That all of the self-important voices and verses about vices and vice versa were dried up, depleted, repeating over and over again.
A woman dances. I spill my guts in a shower of gore. Rinse and repeat. Cash the fucking check. A run of the mill windbag, windmilling the same too-taut notions of viscera and shock and schlocky sex. There's nothing cerebral in it. Nothing visceral, really. Gratuitous, glorified nonsense. Piteous things, those words then, pious though they sometimes were. Pedantic, prattling poetry and pilfered, polluted pragmatism perched upon ponderous pustules. All about alliteration, all the while braying that the forms, though always worth a read, are too restrictive. As if creativity gives a damn about which channel you're watching.
So what is worse? The fear of silence or the fear that nothing I've said has made a difference? Indeed, that I have said, at best, nothing. A year (and some) of sleepless nights and listless, breathless pacing. A year (and some) of twitching fingers and rampant, repugnant anger. The sort of directionless rage that twists you into knots and warps the world around you. A year (and some) and I have found the answer here is neither.
Perhaps I've never said a word that matters. Perhaps I have spoken once, and then everything else has been echoes. Perhaps all the profound things I could unearth I've already sold for scraps, squandered all the gifts I was born with on whores and drugs and other men's brilliance. I could be wrong. And what if, suddenly, the silence took me forever? If all the potential still to be mined stayed there, buried, forever. If no one ever read my tales of bards and broads and battles. If all my songs went unsung and all my heroes vanished. If Tyrvas never reclaims her honor, if Hyleth never saves his wife. If Rythe never rallies against the Darkness, if Varth and Kade are never reunited. What if?
The answer, of course, is that the fear is the worst part. If silence takes me, then silence takes me. Shame on me for losing the fight. If all I had to say is said then let it echo on and on again. But being afraid is foolishness, and that I cannot bear. I have always been terrified of looking stupid, and in being terrified gave stupidity a chance to creep in. I will not stand for this anymore.
The storm is brewing. All their voices keep me up at night. All howling, all in chorus, all telling their stories at once. They can't die, not really, not unless they die with me. So now to break the silence. To stretch and flex, to unfurl from this hibernation and shake the dust off of my bones. Now to claw at the sky and breathe deep of the earth. Thunder. Fire.
I have never felt so alive.
Revenantly Yours,
-S.R.
