Dusk

It is dusk in the room, in my mind. The sun has shone valiantly all day, but by now has grown tired. Its feverish ardency, which held back the shadows for a time, already begins to dwindle.

Gradually, its radiance softens. The harshness of its glare melts, and, just for a moment, its soothing presence floods through the oak panelled windows. It seeps in through the panes of glass, oozes across the flagstone floor, viscous streams of hazy gold that stagnate in syrupy puddles.

I close my eyes, and bask in the momentary calm.

Picture the room. The room is your mind. You are safe, and you are shielded, and nothing is going to harm you.

But I feel my heart sink with the sun, as it makes its steady, insistent descent towards the skyline. The halcyon languor is dissolving and there is nothing I can do.

Picture the room. The room is your mind. You are safe, and you are shielded, and nothing is going to harm you.

For a brief moment, the room is washed with an irradiant sepia filter; I sink into the sultry embrace, bathe in the waves of golden comfort that wash over the room, allow myself to be swept along in the ebb and flow of the rays that ripple and quiver. 

Picture the room. The room is your mind. You are safe, and you are shielded, and nothing is going to harm you.

As the light slants through the window, it divides into a kaleidoscope of colours that scatter and spin and scatter and spin. Sharp edges mellow. The air grows thick, and syrupy, pigmented. 

You can control your thoughts. You can master them. You are safe, and you are shielded, and nothing is going to hurt you.

The flaxen haze splinters into tiny sparks, the fragments scatter across my mind. Nimbly now, the light dances over the walls, flits across the shelves in a final act of defiance, pirouettes over the table in front of me. It illuminates the specs of dust that pass through its brilliant rays, each becoming, for a fleeting moment, a tiny firefly, brilliant, radiant, enchanting.

Focus on the light. Harness it, capture it. Whatever you do, don’t let it fade.

But I sense her presence long before she makes herself known. She has been there, all along. She waits - hunched, poised - but it will not be long now.

You can hold her back. Focus on the light. Feel its warmth, see its beauty.

The light is already slipping; as easily as it streamed in through the windows, it now trickles out. I know its fate is inevitable. It is with an almost defiant pride that the final sparks scatter across the counter, glints on the vase of flowers on the windowsill, taunting me or her, or both. Already, it grows dimmer.

She begins, softly at first, from the corners of the room; she pools in the slither of space between cupboards and ceiling, lurks in the ominous crevices just out of sight, collects at the base of objects whose definition is already beginning to lose its sharpness. She conglomerates in the most hidden recesses of my mind.

She prowls the corners, pacing, waiting, and, ever so slowly, she begins to unfurl. Shadowy tendrils curl across the floor, lengthening, elongating. 

When the darkness comes, fight it.

As she expands, she absorbs all that comes near her – extinguishes the tiny flames that flicker on what I value most, stifling the golden sparks that gleam on everyone I hold dear. The light is diminishing quickly now, my joys, my passions, fading. Her insidious shadow spreads across my mind.

Sparks become embers become ashes.

At her approach, she dims the passions of scarlets, and sucks the warmth from ambers. Blues become mournful, greens wilt and wither away. She stifles and allures and smothers and cradles. 

Light flees from her presence, as the voice falters. It is uncertain now. 

But what about her soft embrace, it probes, she cloaks you, she shields you.

And I am paralysed with the desire to fight and the aching to surrender, suspended simultaneously between a crippling dread and a yearning to become submerged in her shadows. 

A hint of derision tarnishes the voice now: She is coming for you. There is nothing you can do.

Her limbs stretch, brush against my shoulders, my back, my hair, maliciously – or is it tenderly?

There is no voice telling me that I am safe anymore. It is dark now. Once familiar objects have lost their definition. Shapes blur and morph, indistinguishable from one another, rising to loom and leer over me, before melting away into the darkness. 

Night has fallen in my mind. The familiar has become alien, and I am a stranger in my own home.

And it is only when darkness envelops me completely, that I, too, dissolve - melt into the softness and tenderness of her cloying embrace. Half reluctantly, half gladly, I let myself be extinguished, shrouded, swathed in the blanket of her shadow. 

The light is long gone now, and the night stretches ahead of me. But, despite her malignity, she is a refuge from the brightness of the day.

And so, I smile to myself, softly, in the darkness.