Flowers to replace pain. And then pain to replace flowers. And then a Jackson Pollock to cut through everything else. With your back against the wall, you spend so long fighting to be real. With all your best intentions, you dedicate so many hours trying to do the right thing, but such things seldom bring the reward you want. Does it bring money? Does it bring infamy? Does it bring you the one you dream of at night? For some, I’m sure it does, but it doesn’t mean it’ll happen to you, and yet still you want it. Despite the odds and all the reasons to call it a day, you keep going. Despite the hope in your heart shrinking until it’s no bigger than a full stop, you keep doing what you do because unlike the rest, you never stopped believing even when the belief in your veins seemed to be all but gone. Drinking beer and wrapped in a dressing gown, I bemoan the cold days that leave me feeling old and drained and yet who am I to complain? Nursing a headache with no tablets to make things better, I look past the discomfort and focus on those visions that lurk just on the other side of knowing. Balloons. Yeah, I see a billion black balloons. They lift me up when I’m down. They take me wherever I wish to go. So black and shiny, they promise more than they can deliver but I give myself to them all the same, and the more the words flow, the more places I go. I’ve nothing to give save for my madness. Nothing to offer but passion, which is misguided and obscure at best, and yet no one can take away the love in my heart. No one can tell me the things I see aren’t real. Clutching those black balloons, doors appear and then open like blinking eyes. Each one offers birth. Each leads to a heavenly state. Behind those doors, there’s a music I can never describe. It’s what keeps me coming back. It’s what makes me disappear for weeks at a time. My body withers, but through that music, my mind flourishes. How can it not? Like God, I become at one with all things. Like a bird, I fly. It’s the most natural thing there is, and yet the devotion it demands brings with it obstacles only the few will ever attempt to conquer.
Author S. K. Nicholas 
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