last friday night:
red room, shadows playing, lasers beaming through the smoke; bodies close and the feel of eyes darting, landing, lingering, looking away; ostentatious kisses with another strange man before floating off to dance; bursts of new friends and quick abandonment, everything in flashes through a fog of shots and double rum and cokes; last call and desperate clawing for continuation.
navigation, a journey not remembered, and then:
blue room, pulsing, catatonic sway; great trance of dancing, music thumping in a droning beat bleeding into itself; the blur of a crowd growing and shrinking and growing again.
later:
emerging into daylight, exhausted and eating tesco pasta in the 7am sun. gathering bearings before a train ride home and stumbling to bed. and as always, a cost: a shadow lingering for the next two days, the taunt of needless repetition. a cough, a runny nose, my bank balance glaring from my phone screen.
and on monday:
the spark of a familiar conviction, the ache of something new. life in all its fullness, reaching, reaching out. looking inward at the three pillars of my own undoing, making vows to finally let them go. a nascent excitement, half trepidation; don’t want to get my hopes up, but here before me: the blessing of a new month, fresh start, another chance.
and all the while, a verse:
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
here, a promise, an encouragement, a hope. what great possibilities, expanding horizons, to find my way, to drink from the stream. to finally embrace that beautiful surrender. the age-old question: what would happen if i try something different?
i whisper prayers and cling to my maker, beseeching Him, “make me new.”