Without a Throne

By Shalini B

People have sketched sorrow and written down that monster’s name,
they have knocked it off its ineffable throne and made it a prisoner of our understanding.
But perhaps the most fundamental horror of this world is not the monster but the cave it once wallowed in.
With a torch in hand if you march into its belly, who knows if you will find clockworks upon clockworks,
gears that shouldn’t turn together, or truths that cannot be taught or learnt.
For that which is truly out of our reach wouldn’t perch on something as petty as a throne,
it is not their name that escapes our lips but their essence and existence that surpasses ours.
To fruits that rot on the ground the leaves on the tallest branches are one canopy,
we cannot crane our necks or see far enough to destroy with our words the vagaries of the tallest branches,
the best we can do is think of them as a whole another world, a place not a thing.
Perhaps this is why so many seem to have conquered the monsters of life.
They have never seen people be swallowed by trees, or dancing faces in the breeze.

Despair can choose to be my destiny or my desire but I will always be its witness.
It is a cloak cast over a thousand winds, a mad roar that engulfs the space between your bones.
It has no body, it has no skin, and stands in front of a field of trees,
imposing upon you ‘pain’ and ‘fear’ yet itself only a derivative of the forest it guards.
An army of candles lines up before its thousand wings like ancient men for decimation’s sake,
under the bellows and promises of Despair more than ten are left extinguished.
But if you stand before that rotting cloak with no candle in hand you might just make it past its twisted gate, to enter the fields planted by heaven.

Sorrow lives here, it scratches on these holy trunks and connects lines however it feels,
Sorrow is the author of all our lives, it is formless and silent save the words carved into your mind and skin.
The heretic’s laughs tear through leaves, boughs, and mighty clouds till it can touch the stars in the sky.
Now that I have entered its home and with my ears seen its form I shall witness it in place of you.
But one day to my greatest shock I held its hand but heard not a sound.
Sorrow was not alone and that is why I tell this tale, not for it but for its spirit.

Man, human, you, if you think and feel and know and love then you have been haunted by the spirit of sorrow,
it follows you through crests and troughs, dancing about to music you cannot hear.
The most cowardly of people will waste their lives running away from this apparition so let me show them what could have been.
The spirit advances towards my heart, I hear the song I could not fathom before,
nights I have spent lost in thought but it is in the light of day that I can accept the blessing of heaven that brought her to me.
It is the sound of my beating heart I hear in her footsteps, it is a record of hallowed bark I feel on her palms.
Despair is a puppet of her ebb and flow, a punishment for pathetic men and a reminder of my humanity,
when you kneel before Despair and avoid Sorrow, you will be chased across this earth till your heartbeat scratches out its final chord.
Look back in triumph at the demon you escaped, you will only see a poor girl who wanted to have a dance with you.

True horror will seize your mind, your flesh and the corpse they uphold, your greatest mistake, your first instinct.
One sees a beast and runs away but can never with a single glance see the ballroom it waltzes in.
You refused the first gift of mankind, have dishonoured your heart, and neglected your soul,
in the name of retribution the earth will open up beneath your feet, and great roots and rocks shall swallow you whole.
Fester beneath the dirt and mud till the footsteps above echo your once beating heart and the music prescribed by her dancing form.
Only then is your misery complete, for only then will you know by name the design of your destiny and every one of Sorrow’s scribbles.

“Life” cannot be uttered outside the domain of death, so allow me to dishonour the Reaper in its own home.
Death is boring. It is silent and it is deaf.
Sorrow is its greatest child save its spirit that is unfortunately alive.
She ensures that you will never cease to live, your footfalls will echo beneath the earth
and when they falter they will be remembered by the trees and sometimes heard in the forest from whence She came.

For the first time in my life I now believe that the heavens gave me a chance to see
the leaves instead of the canopy, and hear her voice in place of the breeze.
She, The Spirit, gave me my vows and in her name I said them out loud.
She is a cave, she is a place, she has no name,
She is ineffability without a throne, and she is fate without a loom.


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