Void ≠ Nothing

What you see is not all there is

Photo by Masha Zubareva

I walk alone. Again. Hesitant steps drowning in the blank. We fired together but wired in the opposite directions. Is left wrong? Is right always right?*

Was I too rigid about my truths, and you — too crazy about your fiction? You demanded black and white; I wanted other colours. The reasons matter only for the learning curve. The results are tattooed into my hippocampus in caps dripping the scarlet of grief.

You gripped my heart with a clothespin of lack, but the winds went wild, and love bled out of the doubt holes. Devastation. Back to the default mode of distrust.

You looked and looked… You didn’t see me behind my rounded clone forged by your needy mind. I am angular. Raw. Broken. The shards of me glued back together with whatever resilience remained in my incinerated innards. No kintsugi there. No gold. Some ashen tears supporting the scaffolding — home to fresh smiles amidst clouds and rains and pains. Timid, a newborn sun shines out of my irises that have seen sorrow sites.

Void is not nothingness. It’s a dimension where everything is possible. It’s the factory of newness, the cradle of hopes. It is future. Past is full of gems and traumas; future holds nothing… But it can become anything, every dear thing.

I’m floating in emptiness. Unable to fly. Sustained by the translucid abysm of awareness. Seasoning my fears with acceptance and daydreams. Licking regret wounds. I’m scared… yet real. Gut wide open. Eyes ready to swallow, hands — to give. Sacred silence. Words are guarded till they bring benefit.

I’m savouring the pinks in between the blues. I love them all. Even the grey sky. Even black and white if they are points on a spectrum, not the ultimate laws to obey. Not an order written in menacing letters, but the beginning of a sentence with no end… Just a space for me to be myself.

*Is left wrong? Is right always right? — inspired by Alan Watt’s talk “ The Game of Yes and No”.

© Masha Zubareva 2024

A big “thank you” to Scuzzbucket — the best place for self-expression.