I have faced the dragon. I have seen the ocean that drowns. I have seen the fires that consume. I have walked and been suffocated and been burnt. Beneath the waters and the flames I have seen the boulder that crushes.
It is a wooden board with sharp corners and rough edges, and a solidity that won’t fail.
It is a room that shrinks and shrinks until the prisoner is crouching and caught.
It is a fist clenched. It is a rock collapsing in on itself, like quick-sand, forever renewed, never to disappear.
I had hoped in my delusions and in my ignorance and in my wish for everlasting peace, that when I stared into the dragon’s eye that it would flee and I henceforth I would be free.
I had hoped that when the nest was clear, I could explore the place beneath it, and learn to dispel that too. And then, when I became receptive to the clues that the steps went further down, I hoped that this was the basement.
Alas these logics and mechanics have created a fantastic topology, so terrible. There are angers weighed down by shame, and fears that shroud themselves in sadness. There are patterns that reveal themselves as motifs, particular orders and relationships of forms. Shame followed by anger followed by sadness.
Some of these creatures are subspecies, or children of mixed pairs, or potentiated children born of parthenogenesis.
Some of these creatures appear anew. There is an excitement that rains small bubbles upwards from the chest into the mind, and there is lust that pulls itself towards creation.
I wonder at this creature called shame, that it was buried so deeply as to be discovered later than others. Worse that fear and anger and sadness? What is this thing?
I have wondered if it is the thing that wants us to be the best. I wonder if it mislearns its lessons when treated poorly by those that taught it. I wonder if all it wants is to be loved and appreciated – not myself, my shame! to love my shame for its love for me?
