Everything was fine, my steps were casual and measured. I was climbing my way up a hill, flowers and little shrubs speckled about; I would brush my hands against them as the breeze carried my body forwards to finally surmount this little height. Believe me, I trudged at times and clambered gleefully at others. Trepidations of all kinds. The footsteps of others rustled in the grass, but it was only me. The wind liked to make it seem like I was a little less alone; for that I am thankful.
When I arrived at the crest, I can't say I was overwhelmed with glory. The travel upwards had been eventful and fun but now that I was there, at the end, it felt stifling. On this blooming green hill I stood and searched. I looked frantically for something else and there was nothing. All around it was the same monotonous landscape of shrubbery and flowers and wind that tried to be a person but had no substance and so all it could do was blow along the grass in sad acceptance of its fate. In the sky, there were slow dottings of clouds. I couldn't tell you their purpose; it seemed like all they did was hang there. Everything lazy, everything practically still.
It was unbearable. Finally I had finished my task and I was so ready for more. So much energy built from my journey! So many hopes! Still, I continued to look fervently and so I stepped forward with impatience. Blind and holding so many expectations. Ah, to live the life of a fool and to finally reach a precipice so high; ah, to have been pushed up by forces not my own; ah, to not know how to walk and tumble downwards. A mockery of Sisyphus.
There is a sinking feeling of absence and suddenly I am upside-down in a world that hasn't changed at all.
The wind propels me into the sloped earth and there are rocks in my skin, blades of grass and bodies of flowers whipping me for my insolence. My tense body hits even harder ground over, and over, and over, and over. The pain is immersive and yet I still find myself thinking about how I got here. The sudden turmoil I felt at the unassuming expanse of the exact same things I had already seen. Do I feel guilty or betrayed? By whom? Who did this to me if not myself? Had it been my glistening idealism that sent me tumbling or was it the weight of an ego too big for its inexperience?
Idiot. Idiots. The world is smeared wth red as I am ground down smaller and smaller; a layer of flesh tears away with each shuttering jolt of the resounding earth as my body bounces farther downwards. The burning I could feel could be the sting of tears at the back of my throat, it could be the insurmountable anger I feel as I am forced to look onwards, it could be the planet on fire around me as the luminescence of suspicion chars all of these sickly things to ash.
Suddenly the hill transforms into a mountainous assembly of crags and death. There are scores along the rocks from bones much older than mine all around; I am not the first to have found this place. Not at all. Even as I clatter along, my voice silent and yet my body weeps with agony, the lonely wind does not leave me. In fact, it has bestowed to me a community of screaming people; they, too, are tumbling right along with me. We journey onwards; angry, crying, mournful, lost, desperate, hopeless, defeated, clinging, freefalling.
Together we suffer our mistakes