What are You Afraid of?

            “What are you afraid of?”

            I stand close to the abyss, so close that my toes almost touch the emptiness. If I lean too far forward I am sure to disappear forever, yet I cannot move away. My will has left me completely. Why do I tarry?

            “What are you afraid of?”

            Suddenly I do not remember how I got here, although it seems the darkness has been hovering beneath me for a very long time. This is the first time I have seen it, but it’s been there all the same, hiding somewhere beyond the recesses of my sight. No, sight cannot see everything.

            It’s so dark. I have never seen such swallowing emptiness in all my life. It’s so dark that when I glance hurriedly around me at the field of bright flowers and calm, straight fields, all the colors I had adored a few moments before now seem dim and dreamy. It’s like going outside in the warm bright sun and then coming inside again—and one realizes how colorless everything is—

            No, it’s not quite like that. It’s the opposite of that. I try to think but the darkness has scattered my thoughts and I am too petrified to string them together.

            “What are you afraid of?”

            I have flowers in my hand. I had forgotten them so quickly, but realize with a jolt that the little bouquet I had been collecting before the darkness—and eternity ago!—now lay clenched in my fists. I hold them up and slowly let my will pry loose my entangled fingers. My hands seem small before the darkness and the crushed flower pedals seem surreal. They had been alive a few moments before, and beautiful, and unique—sort of like people—

            “What are you afraid of?”

            The wind blows. Some of the pedals drift into its flow and sink slowly into the abyss. Now the once still air, the deathly silence that muted all hope, carries the faint voice of the wind.

            “What are you afraid of?”

            The wind has blown something else away. I slowly step backwards and face the field.

            “I’m not afraid,” something inside me whispers. “Not anymore.”

“If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Frederich Nietzsche