Peace

I wasn't sure whether to post this as Persephone or Mackenzie. Some of it's true and some of it's not. The true bits are gathered from several different times and several different places. I guess it's mostly true, with a bit of morbid imagination thrown in. So posting it as Persephone is really a mistake, but at this point.... Who Cares. I'm sure you don't, you mysterious readers you.

Don't worry guys, I'm not suicidal.

Quote echoing in my head: "A glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can."
Ten points if you can identify the book, author, and character who thought it. Actually, if you can come up with all that and the chapter it comes from, you get five thousand points.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pink is a repulsive color. I’ve always thought so, ever since I was little. In a sunset though - there pink is in its element. Pink isn’t meant for clothes or cars, it was meant for flowers and sunsets. It glows, fading fast, but while it lasts the bloom of earth's youth hangs in the sky. The warmth of it belies the cold of the dark blue sky. The royal purple clouds add a sense of majesty to the scene stretching out before me - only cows and trees in front for as far as my eye can see, with a few houses scattered behind me and off to the left, lamps lighted but barely interrupting the dusk. The thermometer reads a frigid 19 degrees. Standing outside, facing west, wrapped in my coat, I never want to go inside. A crazy impulse takes hold: I’ll sit here forever. Even when the pink and purple are gone, even when deep blue sleepiness covers all the world and makes the windows glow, I'll sit outside, back firm against a tree.

I feel tired, and a little pensive. I feel loved - caught up and held in the arms of silence, peaceful, far away from every lighted window, but for once not minding. The dark is beautiful too. Not as eye-catching as the sunset, but easier to bear. It doesn't make my heart burst with beauty - it nurses me back to health, back to peace-of-mind and stillness-of-heart.

Death has no fear in this cold, this starkly honest dark. Shorn of its principal weapon it seems a friend to be welcomed. It seems akin to the sleepiness and numbness creeping through me. And why should it not be? Death, they say, is the ultimate peace, and right now I’m overwhelmed by peace. I could stay out here in the cold all night, and slowly just become a little sleepier, a little colder, a little sleepier, and a little colder by turns, until sleep finally overtakes me, and cold steals my strength. A cold sleeping, and then never waking.

I study this phrase, pleased with the way it sounds. As close to poetry as I ever seem to get in my pathetically prosaic life. Put that way, I'm almost tempted to try it, to let this peace stretch forever, and longer than forever, until I cease to be me and become someone else - an inanimate object - part of the tree, part of the hard ground, the sparse brown grass, and part of the silent night. Yes, even part of the pink.

Silent night.... Holy night....

All is calm....

For some reason I always hated that hymn. I don't anymore.

I don't think about how my family would react. I don’t think of my friends. I don't wonder who would find me. I don’t think I would care if no one ever found me. I could melt into silence then, like a blue birthday candle melting into frosting on my sixth birthday cake: eventually the two are one. I hold peace and silence firmly in my mind, and the phrase echoes: A cold sleeping, and then never waking.

I hope I die in winter, after a deep snow. I shall just walk out one day - walk out and spend all day walking, to nowhere, from nowhere. Maybe I'll take some friends with me, and they'll turn back after watching the sunset to get hot chocolate and be warm. We’ll laugh, and talk, and eventually I'll say to them, Go ahead - I'll be there in a minute - I just want to walk a little further. Sad to die lying, but they'd never leave me alone if they knew the truth. One or two of them might not leave anyway - I would have to convince them I’d be OK and I’d join them soon.

I wouldn't.

I’d walk until the sunset died and the comfortable shadows engulfed me again. I’d throw a few last snowballs, and maybe have a last frolic and a last snow angel or two. No, that would be undignified; an unnecessary clinging to life.

Just one last snowball.

I'd find a big snowbank, and lie in it, looking up at the starry sky. Maybe near a brook or a river. And I would simply wait to fall asleep, everything peaceful, calm, and hymn-like. And I would wait until the numbness made me sleepy, or the sleepiness made me numb, and in the snowbank, my eyes would close, and my mind would finally stop whirling.

A cold sleeping, and then never waking.