The sun may rise, but the shadows only become more pronounced in defiance of it's appearance.

Timothy Wolfgang Truman Petraitis

"If you know what my love for you is! It is fire; it is molten lead; it is a thousand daggers in my heart." — Claude Frollo.

I woke up in the dark. I went back to sleep in the dark. I woke up and once again the velvet curtain was pulled across the sky but this time I arose.

I went to the gym, and it was dark on the roads. I stopped for a raccoon who plotted his evening in devious deceit, his intentions clouded by the dark. I observed as he evaporated into morning dusk, and as he did he became even more of a spot in the void that hung over the corpse of the Everglades that was my home.

I left the gym and it was still dark. I began to believe that the font of ink that colored all this morning was flowing from some wound that was invisible to others but to me was a puncture that poured forth to blot my eyes and still there was the dark. And the dark was still.

I drove my wife to work and the darkness still clung to me and the shadows beneath the palmettos and in the sawgrass became the black linen crepe that held the humid swamp together and hid the creatures that needed to hide. Sometimes I feel I am one of them.

I drove back to work and still the darkness swept the pavement like a tide spit forth from a giant inky octopus, and I was beginning to believe it was indelible.

I arrived at school and parked and still the shadows mocked my footsteps as I was pulled by the ebony current towards the WAVE, and the WAVE was itself a metaphor of light in a sea of black. I was pulled within to learn about literary techniques and somewhere in my heart I could feel the sharp spider fangs that searched for purchase on my delicate soul.

I took the elevator to the third floor and walked to the furthest classroom on campus, and I began my day with the light of hope and sunrise in my eyes. Alas I was locked in for the day and only was given reprieve as I ran to my truck to move it from the parking lot before the band, mortified by it's existence, rolled it over on it's roof and stood on top to play it's funeral song with squeaking saxophones and thunderous percussion.

And now I am home and the only light all day has come from the spark I saw in one child's eye as I taught and that was enough to dispel all of the melancholy and allow me to return for another attempt tomorrow.