Darkness, and only darkness. Certainly nothing darker than darkness (is there even anything darker? aside from the darkness inside all of us?). Certainly nothing. But whatever is here, for something must be here, hidden behind the dark blankets of nothingness (there is always something), is something ancient, something forbidden. Maybe even serpentine, as it tries to kiss the air but only speaks in tongues.

It's something heavy, oppressive, something thick and viscous that keeps me from fully following this fleeting feeling and from fulfilling the folly of man.

For I stay away. I do not enter the cave. I do not see its maw, this serpentine…something. But I can feel its maw, tongues whispering temptations, but this sheep is not a sheep. I fell out of the herd a long time ago, no shepherd has brought me here to this cave from my dreams. Except this is no dream, because a dream is something distant, unattainable, borderline metaphysical. But I am here, and this is now. And this now is a now that I hoped never to have to confront. I am unworthy of Poseidon's judgment, and besides Poseidon, I am unworthy of myself (that is, if you choose to believe in the 'self' (but again, that is entering the realm of the metaphysical (and this is not meta, but it is physical))).

Air from aquatic lungs keeps me from asking the big question that is on my mind but mostly in my soul.

'Why me?'

But even if I could breathe, and even if I weren't scared of asking, scared of the answer…scared of Poseidon, (shouldn't I take comfort in his trident? In it's ability to pierce multiple tongues? To provide some kind of antithesis to this serpentine offering (if you could really call it an offering?)…comfort found in metaphysics has already been contemplated (did you forget?) This is no dream, and Dionysus is certainly not here, celebrating is out of the question.)

Maybe it's forbidden? Not Dionysus, and not a celebration of the spirit of man (though it certainly seems far away) but instead an answer, if an answer did indeed exist.

Enlightenment proves elusive as the light that was meant to prove elevation is smothered by the present darkness presented by my slithering friend. Though make no mistake, he (or it?) is not my friend. The only friend I need is oxygen, and my friends are indeed present, but are rendered voiceless in the sea of white noise, hopelessly outnumbered. For every one oxygen there are two hydrogen, and that means two less chances of ever knowing why.

'Why me?'

And while I scream from the depths (and the depths do indeed scream back (louder than I can bear to tolerate)) others are left screaming into the void, hoping, begging for a response.

But my words never reach them, and their isolation is never justified. In an attempt to find harmony in a chaotic universe, they hurl themselves over the wall of life's edge. We were born from darkness, we will return to darkness.

Once again;

'Why me?'

Why everyone but me? we hear from the shadows. And I say we because hydrogen and oxygen have accepted their differences and lungs can only scream for so long before they take everything you give them. And what I give them is what they've craved all along.

I breathe in the darkness. I breathe a breath that has been breathed a thousand times by a thousand different voices in a thousand different tongues. And as I inhale, I realize…that which is forbidden is never truly gained.

For the serpent now slithers in me.

From darkness I was born. To darkness I have returned.