Wanderlust

Sometimes, when the sun is setting and the world is slowly bathed in the dark of late evening, I stare off into the distance and get the urge to wander wherever it leads.

I imagine myself standing and following the lonely stretch of road to see where it takes me, never to return. This mundane life of isolation, of living alone and often feeling alone makes me crave somewhere else. Not necessarily with the company of people, but to just explore, to become a wanderlust beneath an eternal evening sky as life pauses around me.

The silence of the early night would surround me, and I would know that my eventual end may meet me at the other end of wandering. If I become too tired, I can just let myself wither as I continue on, and I can at least know there is something other than these four, plain, white walls I feel like a prisoner in.

The agoraphobia keeps me here. The trauma that has warned me that I cannot trust anyone new. The melancholy that has seen so much and experienced all of the ugly in humanity has become so disheartened, has lost hope, and I cannot bear to look at society any longer.

Alone on a back road in the country, beneath the darkening sky, as the air becomes chilled, as my heart grows heavy with nostalgia for better times — as I walk for miles until my feet bleed — I can wither peacefully, crumble to pieces among a darkening nature. Each piece of my body will flutter away, piece by piece, as flakes of burnt paper turn into black moths.

©2023 Shane Blackheart