I can hear slivers of sunlight cracking through the predawn darkness. Daylight is attempting to pry open the edges of a sealed chamber; a cavity in which night spent an eternity blocking the sun’s rays. Once light begins to flood the sky, the bright flow can’t be extinguished until it has run its course.
The air around me becomes a spherical prism, spinning waves of light in sharp circles that dance off everything they touch. Each breath I take fills my lungs with particles of light that traveled incomprehensible distances from stars I can’t even see. Those radiant specks from the far reaches of the universe merge with drops of the sun’s visible energy, bathing me in the detritus of the Big Bang.
The impossible task of explaining the transition from secrecy to truth and from darkness to light and from distance to proximity falls to me; I am not up to it. I am incapable of explaining my understanding of infinity. I cannot express how far into the night I can see when the sun is hiding behind a veil woven from threads of danger and risk.
There will come a time when I will be unwilling to try anymore. I will give in to the allure of stepping off the bridge between pain and paralysis. Then, the sharp edges of life will spill away in a mist, illuminated by what’s left of the sun.
