The Dark Path

To borrow the shittiest, most overused image in literature for a moment, let’s pretend like what I do next is original.

Original thoughts come rarely, as rarely as life itself. Everywhere you look is a bright world of color and hatred. A beautiful, blissful carving at the base of a jutting cliff from the mountain of shit. But that isn’t original. The dark path goes past the scenic abuse of our masochistic temporal wastelands and traces a river of regret-soaked vomit poured from a half-liter of a blue-eyed, blonde bottle of vodka. There’s a downtown apartment overlooking the dark path right now. Inside, two sweaty shadows have sex in July, with the windows and doors open to the boulevard below.

How the sucking maw with black holes for eyes pulled its prey inward, so too does the entrance to the dark path. A whirlpool of originality, spewing unseen colors, unheard-of ranges of vibrations and sound, the dark path catches the eye. It inflames every sense, violent with color, promising poison.

Hatred and ignorance fuel the torch that illuminates the caverns of their being. To learn more about the other so as not to destroy, but consume, an orange glow pours in from the ancient streetlamps – just enough – just enough to see fear. They burn like pines in a flame in a nation of heat.

And they walk the dark path.