Salt Forged Stories

Is it weird that i can feel it? Like, really feel it. it's late. I've seen this time before. I know what time it is. I know exactly what time it is.

This is when 15 year old Salt put his legs in the unheated pool in the Los Angeles winter and just waited for God to see him (suffer) and

This is when 17 year old Salt gripped his chest and fell to his knees and moaned and prayed and

This is when 19 year old Salt poured his very soul onto papers and screens to tell you and everyone else about the yawning black hole tearing a hole in his chest and eating every feeling inside him until all that was left was desolate empty antipathy churning and sloshing and seething and pulsing and

This is when 21 year old Salt jogged and ran down the campus quad and up the steps and sat and yelled at God when he was certain his poems wouldn't amount to anything and anyways it was no good and no use and

This is when 23 year old Salt sat and sank into his bottles when he realized God wasn't going to yell back at him and even if he did would he even hear Him because he hadn't in so long and

This is when 27 year old Salt watched his wife sleep peacefully and wished he could do something about the 12 year torment keeping him awake at the witching hour and he wanted the quiet around him to quell the loud loud loud loud inside him and

This is when 31 year old Salt takes a shower, drinks water, and lays down, certain that he and his aches and his ADHD are beheld by a caring God and that his struggle has meaning and that it will neither consume him nor define him and that he has work in the morning and that his emotional dysfunction will be overcome by medication and sleep

I know this time very well. And it too will pass.

Find shorter thoughts at https://c.im/@NaClKnight