there exists a forest in this world:
an immense grove of reddish-brown trunks,
dispersed unevenly across the soft, loamy earth.
These trees spend their days vainly painting the sky with their bushy heads.

Before we go any further,
It should be noted that this forest does not actually exist:
it is, in fact, merely a figment of my imagination - but no matter,
because the metaphor must go on.

Anyway, this forest is a peaceful one,
and it came to be that on a particular day,
I found myself wandering its sprawling expanses.
On foot, I was enjoying the solitude, contentedly allowing the day to slide by.

In retrospect, actually, I had absolutely no fucking idea where I was going.

Apparently, though, it was my lucky day,
for at length, I came upon a place where the forest opened up -
it was a clearing in the wood, as an oasis in the desert,
and it called to me with a siren's song...
...and of course, as the story goes, I felt compelled to come closer

I approached, and found it to be a rather well-defined clearing -
it was as if the stately trees, in their never-ending march across the land,
had come upon this spot, decided it was too hallowed for even them,
and gone on growing around it.
I, for one, was enthralled -
the place was like a heart in the grove,
pulsing gently with the rays of the Sun
which streamed down from above in thick, visible beams

In the middle of the clearing,
there was a massive millstone, which positively confused me -
I am unused to foreign elements in my personal metaphors.

Perhaps for that reason,
or maybe for another,
I was drawn to that millstone.
some inexplicable force was inviting me to take a seat at its center, and,
feeling both weary and intrigued,
I gladly complied:
but just before I sat down, I experienced a sudden moment
of apprehension and insecurity.

I ignored it, sat down, and was promptly blinded by a violent flash of light.
It lasted only a moment, but may well have been the single most intense moment of my life.

For in that instant -
that infinitely short period of my life -
I, for one ephemeral, fleeting, pure moment,
knew both myself and the world inside and out.

I saw myself standing in a void,
and at my side, I saw a woman -
and I dare say, I gawked at her.
She was beauty incarnate -
she was amazing - gorgeous -
like an earthly manifestation of divine architecture.

She glowed!
She was hyperreal and overbright.
She appeared in deepest perspective,
flowing throughout manifold dimensions and
infinite spaces.

She carved through the atmosphere that surrounded her,
splitting it away and peeling it back like an old skin,
and stepped outside and throughout the world,
draping herself in the fabric of space.

I was taken with her exquisite simplicity -
the promise of everything in nothing.
Drunken with some thing deeper than emotion.
So that there, in the center, the walls came down,
and for once,
I flowed freely, partner to a shared existence, fluid and amorphous.


But it was just a moment -
just a bright flash of light in my little metaphor.
I soon felt the inevitable become imminent and inescapable,
and as I came back into my forest, I was sent scrambling to regain
the pieces of me flung far to the four corners.

My vision returned, and I found
that the sky had darkened,
and that I was in danger...
...I ran headlong through the trees, with each one taking the time
to reach down and lash out at me,
lacerating my haphazardly collected body.

There exists a street in this world.
Like other streets, it is black and smooth.
Along this street runs a series of street lamps,
each evenly spaced and casting their cones of white down
to the street below.

It came to be that on a particular evening,
I found myself spinning around in circles,
staring up into the blinding light of one of those street lamps...

...and as I turned slowly, my face tilted up and drenched
with the sky's springtime offerings,
I was surprised to find that the warm rain felt good
upon my freshly opened wounds.