Quest Failed Successfully
What had come first, I can not say for certain. Maybe the stillness of my heart beneath the pressure upon my chest. The prickling sensation down my spine, ringing each vertebrae like a tuning fork, was alarmingly present as well. I stirred against a deep paralysis undertaking me, as if I laid at the bottom of the deepest ocean. Crushed beneath a force I could not fully perceive.
“Wake up, idiot.” The voice was familiar in the way it revealed it’s age. An elderly voice, marked with raspy impatience. “I said get up, thrall!”
My gaze is greeted by an ancient man in a wide brimmed hat. By ancient, I don’t mean old. I mean he had to of been - leastwise - one hundred years young. His skin had the texture of beef jerky, two beady yellow eyes sunk within hallow sockets.
I propped myself up against the table, now discerning how my limbs had been sewn together. The color of life evacuated; my skin a deadened, grayish-blue tone. I open my mouth to speak, but only manage an unintelligible mumble.
“Not my best work,” he says, pulling a string on my wrist. My hand snapped back into place before I could notice it was falling off. “Deliver this package, thrall, and you may return to your eternal slumber.” There’s that word again. “Fail me, and I’ll curse you to walk this plane as an undead idiot, forever.”
He swings around to grab a small brown package, carefully wrapped in twine with a neat bow, and drops it in my hands. Wide eyed, I slowly come to the realization that I had been resurrected by some curmudgeonly necromancer. It wasn’t the dark robes that deceived him, but the hobbit hole he resided in, with skulls and bones of creatures both of known and unknown origins lining the walls, or hanging around like morbid decorations.
Ah, shit.
“Follow the Star of the Seducer until you reach Hag’s Hall,” he orders without any explanation of what the fuck any of that is. I try to question him, but my throat only produces a gurgling whine. “Not even an undead twat like you could miss it.” Actually, maybe he does understand me.
However, I wasn’t prepared for what this strange new world had to offer. As I wandered out along the path, I perceived sights beyond my imagination. Trees had grown as tall as skyscrapers, so massive they held unique ecosystems within their myriad of branches. Long waves of purple grass clamoring around a shimmering creek, spotted with colorful stones and glowing fungus along its shore. A two headed rabbit peeked from behind a flowering bush, studying me with nervous fervor.
I look at the package cradled in my arms, then again upon the dreamlike world beyond me. I toss it in the water without a second thought, uncaring of the curse now upon me, because I knew that in this place… anything was possible.
I’m not going back to sleep, asshole.
To give what you take from me
Those who come together in shared experiences, understanding and gratitude have the strongest bonds. Often I have come across people who only wish to take from me emotionally, but become unwilling to return the same level of support when needed. The one who carries the load while the other prances ahead is not a mutually beneficial relationship. A healthy friendship is found in two who can embrace each other unconditionally, who can push and pull each other forward. Strength is admitting when you are too fragile to carry it all on your own.
Commoners’ Corner
Your greatest adversary is the perception of your own self worth. This enemy of the self having been fed for years by the cruelty of your peers, of a strangers demeaning glance, and from trolls who throw stones off superficially high bridges.
Whenever I contemplate my own writing, my mind wanders back to a distant memory. The school bus where my peers had been passing around a sheet of paper. Howling with laughter, they passed around a poem, reading it aloud while screeching slurs I would never want to parrot. The author of the poem was sinking so low, cradling into himself, I thought he might actually vanish into the dark beneath his seat.
The way they had emotionally eviscerated his worth still haunts the reflections of my childhood. As a result of his torment, I have never written a poem and I probably never will. I wonder how many others that day had decided to never write artfully because the risk of predation became greater than the reward of emotional release.
This poem is cringy.
Your writing is too pretentious.
This trope is overdone.
Your prose is too purple.
There’s more plot holes than Swiss cheese.
We are often balancing a delicate line between receiving constructive critiques or destructive condemnations of our work. We’re often left alone to mend the wounds of our own self esteem, careful not to inflate the ego, because god forbid you believe you are better than what you are now.
Eliminate the false barricades of your self worth. You can not reach the high ground with the arbitrary walls you have placed around yourself. When you finally climb above, do not look down with disdain toward others who are struggling in the pit you had just defeated. Offer a hand and lift them beside you. Practice the discipline of unconditional love in your surroundings and your community.
I can only judge in the place of a layman; a commoner; a literary peasant. I am no better than you or anyone else. There is no writer, no artist, no author I have placed as the authority of what is good or what is bad. The bar does not exist.
Just keep fucking writing. Never let insignificance stunt your growth, or else you may grow with overwhelming regret.
Heed the Call
I had once been married to the sea, however I now sought a divorce. To escape the abuse those waves had inflicted upon me. Taking all my brothers and my men, bonded eternally to her depth and cruelty.
The wildwood now my refuge, greeting me as a foreign invader, falling silent with every step I take against the softened moss and snapping twig. Yet the calling of my name still flows along the smooth wind, pulling me along as an animal on a leash. If I had known the Siren dwelled in pond water, I would have never come here.