Release

There is no moon or stars in this darkness.

Only the soft hiss,

Like a match being struck, as the pen makes its first tentative scratch against a black page.

Then suddenly, everything is illuminated as the ink sparks and flares.

Words jump off the pen,

Bleeding through the paper,

Staining it with the swirling chaos of my mind, heart and soul

A bullet from a gun

The words explode out, swiftly at first, like a thousand glowing embers leaping up from a fire into the air,

Then more slowly, curling tendrils of smoke as the rush of emotion starts to wear off.

A howling burst of wind that blazes ahead of a thunderstorm,

Menacing clouds rumbling behind as lightning crackles

The words are whipped out of my subconscious and splattered against the page like the first burst of rain in a summer storm,

Soaking the paper to the skin.

Water pouring out of the falls,

Rushing over the edge of a cliff face

Like hundreds of dancing white horses,

Tossing their foamy manes and pounding the riverbed in a ceaseless rhythm,

My words tumble their way across the page.

Then, just as fast as they burst out, the words slow to a weary trickle.

 I lean back; sweat glistening on my brow, heart hammering and chest heaving in exertion.

The whirlpool of feelings in my brain has calmed down to a slow gurgling stream,

The water horses steadying to a slow lope over the riverbed.

The thunderstorm grumbles away, creeping away towards the horizon as it is chased away by the warm fingers of sunlight.

The words that once fell in sheets of hard rain have slipped into a comfortable drizzle.

I stare hard at the paper,

But instead see my reflection.

When my pen began its magical dance on the white stage,

It wasn’t ink that flowed through.

My life blood had spilled onto the page,

And there I was.

My ideas, my foolish dreams, my secrets

All wink back at me.

This is my creation, a piece of me.

Brought forth from the caverns of my soul,

My words have been molded into a creature

Unlike any ever seen.

My words are untamable, reckless and bold.

They shock. They intrigue. They anger. They fill with hope.

They bare the raw flesh beneath my flushed skin,

But I am not vulnerable.

My words are my shield.

I have waged a war with my words, wielded them like a double-bladed sword

But I am not under fire.

No one dares to fight my words.

Like a lone mountain, my words stand tall and unflinching,

Warriors of the heart beating in my chest.

Words such as these have always lurked on the corners of my mind,

Wolves crouched in the shadows of the forest,

Yellow eyes glowing in the caress of light beaming from the moon.

Hungry, they waited for the right moment to leap

Out of the thicket of trees shrouding my mind

And into new fallen snow,

Where they careen and dash,

Leaving footprints that never melt,

In the blanket of white.

They do not hunt for the soft-eyed doe.

No, they hunt for peace.

They hunt for passion, a connection.

For self-discovery, self-expression.

 For release, to breathe.

The crack in the folds of my mind where they will no longer be caged in,

Where they can burst out and be free.