Descent

As I close the door behind me, and lock it, the world outside is a lost thing, a vaporous memory dissolving, drifting into blue depths, eroding as the wind grows stronger. I hear it moaning but faintly from within this tranquility.

As I walk further into the depths of this quiet, I forget what it was like there, as if I am forgetting a dream as the day proceeds. The air is still, here in the depths of this underworld. The sound of my feet on the amorphous sand disturbs the fragile order of this secret. I leave marks behind me as I walk on, vestiges of a world that must never find a way here. The sand gently evens itself, removing the memory of my path. Nothing is to be remembered here. The curse of time has not befallen this underworld. There is no past here, no future. It is immortal.

Its walls slowly enfold me; the quietness enmeshes me and soon I will be a part of this place. Soon I will become this place.There is a faint smell of things still, of something lingering, of flesh and of blood, like the remains of a lover within the folds of a quilt at dawn – the smell of loss. But it is only me who has carried this smell from above; it is not of this place. The smell pollutes the sanctity of this region’s nothingness. To bring anything here from the outside world is a sin.

The ancients seem to have settled here, sediments of a turbulent history, now a part of the region’s crust; the ghosts have been resurrected but their memories forgotten – they are alive here, present. The wraiths float in serpentine trails, hidden behind gray pillars now, now suddenly a glimmer in the translucent light, whispering in echoes. They rise and fall and disappear.

Here, where the purple flowers grow upside down, where the rocks are wet and green with water; where the lake is still, undisturbed even by those who live in its depths, what does the world outside matter? Let it be destroyed, let it end. I care not. I have long inhabited a dream. Now I am free.