The Light Ends Here.

The end of the sidewalk was cast in blackness, the shadows of the native trees fell, liquid, into puddles of indeterminate blackness. Holes? Portals? Interdimensional gates? The shapes of foliage, hard wood, and creatures inside the dark forest line painted classical art in hundreds of shades of black, yet only perceived through the hard lines of ‘Black’ or ‘White’. The innate sense of danger lingers at the end of the sidewalk, the genetic coding deep in the DNA. It itches in the fingers, it scratches in the hairline, it perspires in the areas of thinnest skin. Any predator can smell it- the fear.

What is at the end of the sidewalk? The crossing of the known into the territory of the other, the land that belongs to no man, the category of ‘unimaginable’. She lives there, the darkness. The place that she curls up at night, the place where she knows she will always be safe. It is a den, a blanket, an impenetrable wall. The light belongs to him, the illumination feels like safety, each crack and crevice is searched, no stone left unturned. Each sun spot, each warm fire bed, every life giving cell breathes his breath.

He needs her, but he can never find her.

They meet once a year, at the place where the sidewalk ends. They both hang in the sky, a cosmic confluence of ‘Wrong’. He begs her to stay, but she will always refuse him. They dance, and they fight. The dark kisses the light. The world knows that it is wrong, but it cannot help but stop, and watch. At the end of the day, at the place where the sidewalk ends, she knows she is home, and he knows he will never stop looking.