The Savage Within

BY CAROLE SAWO

(through the eyes of a man)

I wanted to smash them. To rip them apart as they had just ripped me apart. To grab them, control them, show them I had more power.  But instead, I did nothing.  I watched as if in some twilight movie as all the parts in me where love had lived, fragmented and were drained from my existence.

In my view no longer my object desire, but had entered in was the global savage.  The demon of rage that knew my plight and was busy justifying my phantasies of retribution in some process of lost soul recruitment. And there, caught in the middle of the battle between heaven and hell, I faded into my animalistic unconscious. Met my own insanity. Let go the hold of reality.  Surrendered the plight and in the remnants of who I thought I was, I disappeared into the nothingness of who I had become.

Sunlight has no regard for the trivialities of human error. It impossibly shines, but thank God for that. In hazy colours of a new dawn, the demon had lost all its power.  That which it had twisted with both hands, fell back into the consciousness of life.  And in that moment of redemption, I saw her face.  That of an angel who sparkled even more brightly than the sun.

There within the full alchemy of experience, I had met the savage within. And in that moment of choice, I grabbed back the fire with both hands.  My fire.  My life.  And she smiled because all along she had known. That beasts reside within the mind of every man.  But rainbows, well they live eternally within the heart of a boy.  And thank God for that.