Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer

“Now I have a little time to think”, she whispers to herself without moving her lips. Nothing new in that.

Her escape pod lays upon a forlorn acid plain. A monotonous mountain-less sweep interrupted by nothing but the cusp edge of newly formed craters and the glowing remains of the ship.

The pod fizzes and pops and its parachute lays limp and listless like yet another discarded prophylactic. Those parting gifts so lovingly cast down upon her cigarette and wine stained carpet. That sodden thing within a room at the end of a filthy ginnel, now on the farthest side of existence.

She thinks of her depression and she wonders just why it is the first thing that flickers in her eyes as her minutes grind and prepare to turn into seconds.

Empathy. How can she possibly even start to pretend she knows how others feel? And how can they know what she is? Those who had opened their hearts to her, the few, they’d tried so hard to equate their losses and the cracks in their lives to those of hers. But into these boxes, she didn’t quite fit.

Love. Such a short and wickedly evasive little meaningless word. Can we still love those who beat us? Can we love those who have drunk from the fountain of our faith and repaid the favour with lies? Of course, we can. Love is love. It is solitary. She truly loves the way that alcohol sears at life’s bitter edge and the way in which Cobain so deliciously played with his words. She loves the fools that drink from her body. Love is real. Loving something wicked, it pulls the fangs from its face.

She’d been told to look at her endless possibilities. To reach into the unknown and not be afraid to latch on to those things that she cannot see. Trust in herself and take a chance. You are perfect in your imperfection, they’d lie.

Reach out and connect with people. Let them in and have them connect with you. Nobody is reaching for her and why in fuck would she want to reach out to others? She loves, but she feels nothing, she sees nothing and she smothers herself in the thick heavy syrup of the dark.

Not all of us have family or people who call themselves friends. How sad they say, for surely she wants for them so, so badly.

As she lays here now with her legs snapped in the wreckage and she looks out into this vicious new world, she smiles. She has found the answer.

“I’ve travelled the world and now many beyond it. I’d predisposed myself to look for the light. I didn’t need to. I didn’t need family. I didn’t need friends. I didn’t need for things to get better. I judged myself by the ‘better’ of others. Life is not set and the light is just a place where all sorts of devils can hop and dance in the sun”, she laughs, and it is not manic nor resided. It is glee.

“My legs are numb and the crack in my view-port is stretching. Bring it on. I cannot wait to see what you have for me next. You, my lovely little personal gloriously crumbling dark adventure. And I will live for as long as I do and I’ll savour every last bit – of you”.