Imposter

Fraud

Misrepresenter of self

Impersonator of who I hope to be rather than who I really am.

The honest imperfections of others are the downfall of my dishonest perfections.

Slanderer

Cheater

The facade of hard work and accomplishment a mask of my true efforts

Seeker of recognition to achieve happiness, yet true pursuit of it is lost to me

Or rather, the truth of it lost and the self-centered pursuit my sole recreation

Vicious

Selfish

Unfeeling fool

I fancied myself a bearer of wisdom, of truth, yet I had no humility

No true desire of instruction, the roots of my black heart tangled in dishonesty

Prideful despiser of true understanding, slaughtered by my greedy hands in my haste for satisfaction

Liar

Sneak

Treacherous gossip

My lips that vowed to speak no evil have poisonous slanders ever dripping from them

The untruths that have no foundation have become my habitual exercise of self.

Egotist

Charlatan

Pilferer of Innocence

The faultlessness of self that I have fabricated in my corruption and that I have imposed on them

It has no root. No basis. I am but a humble creature of little worth with high expectations and little to offer.

Realization that I am little.

That my true self is so repugnant and my true convictions so terribly destitute

This is the rawness of self

The objectionable veracity prevailing despite the comfortable fallacies

Realizations that bring this unworthy soul to its humble knees

Knowing that righteousness can never be found in me

Renewal earned by the death of self

So to myself and all my corruptions each day I choose the painful death

And my gaze humbled by my own repugnance falls upon my only salvation

And I fear, and I pray, that my gaze never falters

For with each waver, Self flickers

Great is the one who saved me from myself

Evil is my inclination, but goodness prevails, for all goodness is His

This sorry fool is made better by unearned grace

I fall to my knees each day

I lower my unworthy head and I pray

And his charity surrounds me in all of its perfection

My debt. My hate. My ungratefulness. My shame.

His death. His resurrection. His love. His grace.

Cautiousness is my weapon of choice.

Recklessness in your haste is your gamble

My cacophony of thoughts - I strain to hear the still, small voice

Yet your narcissism forever rambles

Yet what is sagacious and what is wise?

By what is foolishness and cautiousness defined?

Wanderer, traveler, renegade

But a fair, merry dancer captured in the unescapable serenade

Are the words spoken in confidence veracity or counterfeit?

Are the shouts in the square proclamations or vacuous quips?

Happy though I may be

I wonder if what is there is what I see

Life is simple and love is true

You have me and I have you

Complications, altercations

It's time my verbose mind reached its cessation

My shades of experience make me squint in its paltry supply

Yet, fear not, my constant companion of "why"

I need not trouble with the many uncertainties of accretion

I have given to me the tools for completion

Impetuousness is trouble to me

But peace...be still...are the words that render my worries free

Memories are now a million shivers that leave me blind

Yet, through the pain I have gained sharper sight

It’s good they say, but I am scared half to death

To go back... face monsters whose words I said

Make me, shape me, mold my mind

Let my actions reflect when I try

I was, will, never better

But I am scared to death I’ll be this way forever

I took my hand that did the deed and from myself I severed

The lips that said the vile words that cut like swords

I sealed them shut forever

So not an utter or a word

But then, paralyzed and dumb

I found that I was no longer who I was

I could not hit or feel or use them badly

Yet I couldn’t hug or heal them who hurt sadly

I couldn’t swear or shout or spew in anger

But I could not sing or condole - a feeling even stranger

I reattached the cast off limb

I broke to dust the plaster on my frozen lips

I picked up a shovel and sang a song

I buried who I was and it left my arms strong

With my strength, I lifted high the ones I hurt

And rebuilt the walls I rendered to dust and dirt

I sang a song of what was to come

And I fell asleep knowing I’m not done

Where is this place, where I am?

Who am I, this woman I cannot understand?

What am I doing, and to what end?

These are the questions inside my head

Anxiously I go about

Disappointment is my companion now

Waiting, yet my lover cannot see me

And now my jolly chest aches truly

Still, my eyes sparkle as I depart

These are the sorrows that ail my heart

Crushing guilt fill my deepest corners

Exhaustion demands, my happiness it orders

The joys I have I'm too overwrought to see

These are the pains that plague my body

Never enough, yet not too much

To feel at peace with life's despondent touch

Oh, my whole self I would give

To have a worthy life to live

To be secure, to be pieced whole

These are the troubles that torment my soul

Expression is my obsession

I'm alive and so I must live

All things done to the best if my ability

And in this way will I live

The value of myself is nothing without "we"

And in this way must I give

Your scars, love, are made or gold

But you're a fool 

So what does that make you?

Your affections you so recklessly sold

Your agressions you so liberally doled

Your beauty was your strength

Yet virtue you left in the merciless hands of fate

And now, what friends have you at all?

They rise now, the ones you made feel small

Gone are the revelers in whose company you've spent

Your morality lost in the pleasure of sin

Worthless are the trophies won in vanity

Broken now as you lose all sanity

You wish now you did not take for granted

The genuine company of those who wanted

Lonely is your path

Ardent is the wrath

Now, as lights fade, treasures turn to trinkets

You wish now you had loved in earnest

You wish you had kept your virtue truly

You wish you had not done so cruelly

A cacophony of thoughts are my companions now

A symphony of rhythm fills my senses in its sound

A collage of neon colors blind my eyes in rosy lenses

A lunacy of sensations cloud the air and fill my senses

My thoughts rule my actions and so to them I must appeal

Against the miry evils my mind must I seal

Words naught but for thought

My judgements still concur 

But still time waits not for me

What kind of fools will we turn out to be?

Adrele looked at me regretfully. “If I leave you, I will never see you again. You will die. There is nothing I can do for you, and you will be alone. You will disappear in time, and there will be no one there.” She says this matter-of-factly. She lets me know what this means. But I know it already.

“Go Adrele, and deliver it. Be safe.” I unbuckle the silver strap that holds my dagger and hold it out to her. “Take this and fly.”

She looks at me, and for a moment, I see her eyes grow round with sorrow and the devastation shows in her rigid posture. We are friends, she and I, in a world where allies are few and enemies are plentiful, and now we will be lost to each other…lost in pursuit of the better. But then she lets herself remember the greatness of the task and she takes the dagger, mechanically strapping it around her own waist, and she places her fists on my shoulders in a final salute.

“You are the best Nightwalker I have ever known, Kal, and that I will ever know. Your efforts will not be in vain. I will not let your memory fade. Farewell, and may you find the light.” I look at her and nod solemnly. My own fists goes to her shoulders and I whisper my own farewell.

“May speed quicken your strides and my weariness not find you in this hour of peril. May the shadows hide no creatures and the stars guide you and this mission to completion. Farewell, my dear friend. And may you find the light.”

And then she is gone. And I am alone. And the night still persists.

And now, here I sit. My hands are finally starting to seize and lose feeling altogether. My chest is constricting and my heart thumps wearily in my chest as the ravages of time grab ahold of it. I must lie down because my head is starting to swirl. I have little time now. My life’s story is ending in this moment, but I feel that it is a worthy end. I know that my mission is done and I will no longer fight the darkness. I will go to a place where there is eternal light. My body is on the ground, devoid of feeling and color, week and fragile, threatening to break apart with the merest breath of wind. I wonder where Adrele is, if she is alive, if the stars guided her true and her mission was brought to completion. Fears grip me. I wonder if I will die in vain. I pray a silent prayer for her safety. But suddenly, at last, oh, at last, the sun starts to peak over the horizon and brilliant reams of incandescent colors begin to streak through the sky in a valley of brilliance that elicits stirrings so deep within my soul that I cannot express it in mere words. So long I have resided in the realm of darkness, fated to ward of the creatures of the night. I have not seen the light of the sky in so long. I feel the soft trail of tears streak across my darkened cheeks as the flickering colors give way to the brilliance of the sun’s rays, as it rises imperially into the sky. The darkness is consuming, the stars and moon are lonely and stare blankly at the earth. But the sun is the true master of the sky. It rises slowly, but it still rises, majestic and powerful. It reveals all that is dark and allows the earth to grow. The darkness is only for a time, however long it may be. But the sun is power, the darkness will always, always, bend to the will of the light. The light will never be conquered. Joy fills my chest and I feel at peace. The last minutes of my life are slipping away, but I will die with a smile on my lips and the sun touching my face. My life as a Nightwalker is over and done, and I am at peace. My last few breaths pass through my lips, my heart beats its last somnolent beat, and my mind starts to tire as it fades away – but not to darkness, no, to light. The last sight I see is the world around me coming alive as the sun sits in its thrown in the center of the sky. I close my eyes because it is too bright. I am decreasing as the light increases. And all the worries and fears that plagued me in the sleepless night diminish altogether as the magnificent truth grabs ahold of me. My life was not spent in vain and my mission is complete. The sun will rise. The light will come.

I never asked to be this way. If Mother Nature decided to bestow upon me an abnormally high intellect, a divine ability to compose witty humor, a wealth of unnaturally good looks, who was I to contradict her? It is a curse in its own way I suppose, with all of my fellow humans going on day to day without realizing my gifts and denying the greater meaning of life. It is hard to be superior. Why were certain people such as myself chosen to be so prodigious and therefore forever separated from the intellects of everyone else? It is such a burden to bear. But I must bear it with strength and dignity, as a true intellectual would.

"Conor..." The monotonous drone of my co-worker wrenches me out of my sagacious ponderings and I look over my glasses at her exasperatedly. The majority of my work mates cannot understand the depth of my superior intelligence and my need for deep pondering, and as a result, I am inhibited with socializing with them, though I do try my best to tolerate their ignorance as much as possible.

"Yes, Dorothy?" I sigh deeply at her. She stands with raised eyebrows, her lips twisted in a quirk of bored indifference, her arms folded and a collection of half-hazard documents clutched in one of her fists.

"You've been staring into space for over ten minutes, and I really need to use the printer.” She huffs in a monotone droll. I assess my position, which is directly in front of the office printer, a few documents that I suppose I was collecting are lying in the tray forgotten and I cannot, for the life of me, remember what they are for. But my current physical position is not relevant. It is the philosophically subtle implications of my position that truly matter. I briefly consider whether I should I explain it to her, and, surprisinlgy, find myself in a very gracious mood. I take a deep breath.

“Dorothy, the tedium of life that engulfs us all can be escaped by moments of great sensory magnitudes, it is true,” I explain patiently, raising a pointed finger to the heavens to illustrate my point, “but I myself find the wearisome moments of life the most ripe for philosophical cogitation because the dullness forces the mind to think beyond the elements and make use of the cacophony of boredom that plague us all. To you, I may be simply standing and blocking the printer, but in reality, I am slowly compelling my brain to decipher the meaning of life and discover the mysteries of the universe as well as find my own self. I would not expect you to understand, for I am burdened indeed with my superior mind, but so it is, and so I beg you to understand.” I take a deep breath, winded by my speech, and quite impressed with it too. She raises one eyebrow, disappointingly uninspired, and merely rolls her eyes. She steps in front of me and grab my papers from the tray, shoving them to my chest, then takes her own and feeds them into the tray.

“Well, creature of superior intellect, while you are sitting there ‘discovering the mysteries of the universe’ or whatever you’re doing, our boss is waiting for these files and you are cutting into both of our lunch breaks. I know that the ‘monotony of life’ is fertile soil for your daydreaming and illusions of grandeur, but we adults have work to get done. ” The printer beeps and she collects her papers, giving me one last sardonic look before she clicks away in her too-high heels. I shake my head and sigh. Mere mortals will never understand.