Member-only story
Cottage of Darkness
*
The eternal world and the mortal world are not parallel, rather they are fused.
~ John O’Donohue
*
How strange it is to live in a constant drunkenness of joy, for no apparent reason. I’m in a dark cell, on a stone hard mattress. Around me, the graveyard silence of the prison. From the window, the light of a lighthouse reflects on the ceiling. Outside, every once in a while, the distant flutter of a train or the desperate crunch of sand beneath the watchman’s boots.
And yet my heart beats with unexplainable joy, as if walking through a blooming meadow beneath a radiant sun. I smile in the dark, as if I know a secret capable of turning sadness into light and happiness.
~ Rosa Luxembourg, imprisoned in 1917
*
It was in the winter of my fiftieth year
When it hit me
I was really alone
And there wasn’t a hell a lot of time left
Every laugh and touch that I could get
Became more important
Strangely, I became more bookish And my home and study meant more to me
As I considered the circumstances of my death
