If I told you I was dying, would it change you?

The snow crunches under his feet as he walks, a sea of white stretching out in all directions. There’s a cold, crisp feel of morning, the sky a shade of blue that seems indicative of that time somehow, but it is hard to tell in this wilderness. Months of unending darkness against months of unending light. It seems ironic, somehow, that he has arrived here in the latter. It’s almost as if the universe is providing a counterbalance for his mind, to save him from his own madness. Light and dark, yin and yang. He has lost his equilibrium. Truth be told, whether it's morning or night doesn’t matter. None of it does. That’s the whole point of it all after all, to lose himself in meaningless forgetfulness that stretches forever. It’s the blankest of canvases. His limbs are numb, rugged up in a coat that is glaringly insufficient for this walking, and walking, and walking, and walking... No, he’s succumbing to frostbite, the weakness of what he is essentially unavoidable, human and breakable. Soon he will be frozen and immovable, an object captured in time to blend with this landscape, to be uniform and whole, and he feels...nothing. There is no calm, no peace or vindication. There is no anger, no rush to survive. There is no despair, no pain or contemplation. There is only the numbing silence of a crisp morning covered in snow, and an empty, unforgiving landscape that welcomes the traitors and damned home. He cannot be forgiven, and he will not forgive himself. So the snow crunches under his feet as he walks, on and on, until he falls and the landscape leaves no trace of his presence on its shores.

“Our ghosts haunt our dreams, the quiet recesses of minds that never sleep. Parts of us are always dying, and maybe we don’t notice until it’s too late. The shards are embedded, they niggle when we least expect it. Maybe some seek them out, force them deeper to remember, and as they cut into the soft memories of things best left to rest, maybe some feel more alive. Others may notice that a part of them is gone, but they leave it. They leave well enough alone and let it fade, dust motes dancing in the sunbeams. Parts of me are dying, faster than parts can be reborn, and I am merely driven by the fear of forgetting. The faces, and the promises, begging and failing. Twisting shards, making sure they do some damage, pushing them deeper, again and again. As death keeps fighting, I can take my last breath amongst the ghosts of all who have stood beside me.”

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Music: Life on Mars? - David Bowie
Mood: Melancholic