E

 Dragging my feet I resist the beat and find contentment in melancholy

All around are the sounds of frowns turned upside down by the clowns of secret garden party

But I don’t feel

I am not included

For inhibitions have become deluded and are jailed by the diseased thoughts rotting through my brain

the same tape

Playing over and over again

I should have sprung upon the chance to release my anger

Tell her I couldn’t stand her anymore

That the very sight of either of them raged an internal decision that wedged a slice in my moral division 

But I didn’t act, I didn’t react. I just stood and stared, impaired by the impending despair I was to be thrown into.

I’m glad I haven’t seen them again

no matter how much my twisted mind imagined their end 

In all truth

I couldn’t bring myself to raise my eyes to them

for loci is my intent not my intervention.

So as the sun beats down on my harrowed head

I follow the lads into the remix tent

A stage ablaze with dub step DJ's Magnetic Man and fans tearing it up their own way, sending a rippling wave across the masses and the crowd loosen their legs and let the music guide them

I see Blackers riding the wave to the stage where the rest of the crew continue to rave

And I follow

 Moving slow and steady to the enticing entrancing harmony

I find a little pocket in the crowd look around and clock it instantly 

Josh the adulterer smiling uncontrollably as he invades my mates, has his hands over the face and hips of one of the girls.

'That’s fucking it, had enough of this shit!’,

clenched fists

teeth grit

a red mist descends over my eyes and I stride side by side with Blackers but I don’t notice him this time

And as I carve my way to the bane of my insanity with daggered glares and muttered profanity 

My body becomes tense,

hell bent on inflicting the sort of pain he had on my brain and self esteem

I reach him as I smoulder, tap him on the shoulder draw back my hand ready to make him look 40 years older

But in the midst of the swing forward

another hand intervenes,

screened from my eyes

I turn my head to take in who would dream of coming in between me and my destiny and it’s her.

E

Instantly the rage drains from my veins and my eyes, ears and body are filled with the softness she instils and I relax.

Her hand travels up my forearm to my clenched fist where she uncurls fingers and calms it to rest in her hand

and she stares into my soul

Fully in control of me now

she takes my hand down to her back, still in hers, she turns.

 And before my ego can put me back on angered roads

She slowly, gently, leads me out of my own personal inferno.

Now away from the raving bass my angry face turns to sorrow

Still following her I wish for tomorrow for another day to be as far away from the person that almost destroyed me

But as I contemplate my fate my eyes slowly rise from the floor

Lain in front of me is a sight only the rare see 

Lights glow all around all different colours that dance to sounds of freedom over the large lake behind main stage, illuminating reflections of the stars and the pirate ship bar in the middle.

And she turns to me as we stop on a hill away from the festivities

And she whispers, barely audible, close to my ear

“Your time is here,

not then and not before,

not tomorrow,

not anymore.

Now

this moment in this time

with me by your side

Let go

Let go”

She pulls her lips away and brings her head close and looks into me

Her eyes radiate perfect innocence, redemption, a rebirth from my crippling malevolence and I notice her, not for the first time, nor the last and my hands start shaking and she clasps them so tightly.

Ashamed, I can do nothing but look to my bare feet

The raging intensity of hatred, mistrust, betrayal all apart, combine in crippling velocity as a sledgehammer on my heart

and

I

break

down.

One tear at a time, slips from my eyes and after a while, grow to a divine monsoon

I am at my weakest

awash in vulnerably

a soft wind could easily shatter the stability of my legs at any minute

but it never comes.

Instead so very calmly a soft hand guides itself under my chin and she pulls my head up to a level position

She has me

in her eyes I see fire, I see health

a wealth of love in kind and caring, a beauty that I can’t stop staring at.

And she utters but a single sentence

“You have to die a few times before you can learn to live, forgive yourself”'

My heart and head, battered by the surge of emotion click in time once more and for once, before becomes no more.

As the only thing in this moment is her,

the one

I adore

And then it hits me, a distinguishing clarity. 

My heart is hers, and hers in me,

it always has been. 

I was just too busy looking to see. . .