reflections

We are all little tragedies--small, sad stories clothed in flesh and dreaming of redemption.

These words echo in my mind, unexpected poetry from a mind that has strayed far from pretty words. I remember once taking pleasure in words, in their power and the passions they could inflame. I remember going to rallies, where other students would stand up and speak—I remember words like flames, and feeling an echoing fire within myself. That was before my marriage, before my death. My soul was hardened in hell, even as it was split. I had no beauty, no poetry, and no passion.

Until Shin.

My brief time with him awoke something that I thought had not survived my time in hell. I never meant to fall in love with him.

I denied my feelings for some time, perhaps because I knew that to acknowledge them was to bring an end to my time with Shin. Yet I would not change a moment of what has passed. It took the agony of a heart breaking to show me the next step to enlightenment. Perhaps I would have stagnated without that flash of insight. Perhaps I would have found another way to walk the Road Back.

But I doubt that. To wallow in self-pity would have brought me only blindness. I am no longer human--I do not have the luxury of falling into despair. I raise my voice in the Howl of the Devil-Tiger, and the trappings of humanity can only hold me back.

Yet I am not the creature I was. I cannot go back to that, to living like a statue begrudgingly taking part in the world around me. I must know this pain has not killed the passion so recently kindled within me. I have to know that this pain is not hollow.