September 8, 2001
Final Warning
There's this strange thing about fate. It can show you things, and you don't even see them. It can warn you, and you'll ignore. The subtlety is so much that you won't notice, and then when you do, you will wonder if it you are only percieving it through the film of your current situation.
I'm coming home. And maybe things happened that should have kept me from going, and maybe they didn't. Maybe I ignored them. Maybe I created them.
A week has eaten itself into my heart. Jill, the grand actress, has worn her mask. Some would say I should wear it just a little bit longer, and then maybe the face underneath will be able to bear the brightness of this foreign sun. But I don't think so.
Here, I think, there is no sun.
I judge and disappoint myself only. I wish I were stronger. I wish that mask were my real face. But I understand what is best for me, what is best those that are afraid of the dark.
There are too many roads in life for me to take the first one my feet stepped upon. Some roads are similar, other vastly different. This one was strange beneath my feet, strange and unwelcome. I can admit that I have made a mistake. I can turn back.
But not to stay. I do not turn back to stay. I turn back to take a different road.
Fate may a have warned me. She may not have warned me. But as I feel the wind picking up and blowing the leaves across my feet, as night descends, I heed my own warning. I listen to that most fickle instrument of all, my heart. She may be wrong.
But I will trust my tears today.
astera at limbo