Give me safety.
Safety from the howling and screaming, from the blinding lights and the pitch-black everywhere. From thick, suffocating smoke, dark like the most light-starved depths of the abyssal ocean. Safety from insanity, from scratching nails on blackboards long as the Earth’s shadow and dark as nightmares.
Safety from a night that never ends, a day that never comes. Safety from chaos, from the end of structure, from cruel noise and the deafening wind, from the dark and the leering eyes in the shadow, from teeth and holes and dancing shades in the corners, behind every back, along the walls and the ceiling.
Safety from the infinite dancing behind my eyelids, from the fabric of reality—a twisting seam tying and untying itself back and forth, undulating towards eternity. Safety from the uncountable manifolds of realities splayed across the sky like stars.
The world marches forward endlessly.
Light flashes to darkness and reality collapses and reconstructs itself. Scenes of life play out like film and fade to black.
The structure of language quavers, trembles, and buckles under the dreadful weight of the infinite. A million lights flicker out of existence as galaxies of possibilities explode in a terrible brilliance, and then we begin again.
The world marches forward endlessly.
And I crave safety.
Safety in repetition, in old music. Safety in soothing calm, like soft dew and morning mist, like a mother’s caress on newborn cheeks. Safety in the carefree breeze brushing by hammocks and picnics, in grasses lush and verdant, swaying in the autumn light. Safety in the quiet celebration of life. Safety in the fireplace that keeps warmth through the night. Safety in the door that guards tender hearts from the callous wolves straying outside.
Safety in the flame we kindle together, the amber light that pushes back against the overwhelming black. Safety in reunion—in communion. Safety in the twinkling of hearts meeting and staying close through changing seasons. Safety in continuity, in friendship and family and the bonds of life.
Safety in our corner of infinity. Safety in your eyes, where there is wonder that words cannot describe and beauty that all the wavelengths of light in our universe cannot capture.
Safety in us—like a speck of stardust in a supernova, a leaf caught in a hurricane, a twig in a tree that splits infinitely in all directions. Like a dot poked into a paper that stretches across every conception of reality ever formed. Like a diamond in the riverbed, among rocks and pebbles and more grains of sand than there exist numbers to count them.
Safety in our hands reaching, stretching, meeting, together—against all odds.