Charley’s Agnosthesia

within the clandestine depths of her unassuming mind lurks a cornucopia of life, images, thought.

the otherworldly Delusions of an "average" girl living an "average" life all intermingling, ever-growing, until! in some moments of melancholy, wanderlust, imagination: a solitary wisp curls out, overcoming the average girl with a flood of overwhelming romanticism, a desire for the Other.

within the clandestine depths of her unassuming mind there are the multiverses of the hypothetical. the paths never taken and the choices never made and the feelings never acted upon, all branching out from the numerous little what-if roots, creating alternate realities amplified by the resonant! voices in her head.

what voices? those of her conjectural doppelgängers; those that she might've, could've, would've, but never have been; those that scream into the Abyss hoping to be heard during the lonely hours on the cusp of— dawn.

I screamed into the void, asking And the universe: a blank, uncaring reach of time Said nothing, Likewise to the millions before me.

Science says I am a product of miosis That I rose from a sea of amino acids Pooled on a speck of cosmic dust A testament to natural selection Embedded in 1.618, golden, evolved, biochemically Structured, predictable, meticulous.

Matter and time is all that there is I exist, c'est tout, and all is blankness, A canvas where I hold the paints, nihilist A living amalgamation of fossilised experiences That ceases being in totality the moment of the cessation of my heart. Reality resumes. Or are we suspended in Milton’s mass of Chaos, Plato's shadows on the wall of a cave? Bearing such eschatology, will I be Trapped in an Inferno or a Kafkaesque limbo? Are we projections in an absurd, brutalist matrix In blind conformity to pre-coded proclivities? So, 

Maybe I am bound by an all-encompassing Fate, As the Greek tragedians pen of a dismal Oedipus Forever confined to a future predestined As a Raskolnikov or a Napoleon Shaped by the snipping, cutting, and measuring of Mystic thread. Pawns in an arbitrary, celestial design.

And whether reality is a construct of matter or fate How should we then live? Tethering our existence to Some unyielding, abstract, ethical decree? Grasping for some order, some de jure legitimacy Knowing that behind Manichean depths of conscience lies Promises of an elusive truth. Provided it exists.

Do all roads lead to heaven? Contradictions cannot co-exist, and I too Am paradoxical: spiritually anorexic, Starved yet repelled by nourishment, if you could even call it that— Struggling for a shard of autonomy.

It's teetering on the edge of a cliff With a dizzying sense of vertigo You fly when you believe, they say Take a leap of faith. But I am afraid to plummet.

So I stand there, with scraped knees And unanswered pleas simply Looking down On the cusp of existence, I wonder.

Time passing slowly in my quaint café in strolls a Western man with purpose clear, retrieving a lost Orwell, treasure dear, crowned in silver but wisdom not yet old, fancy jacket paired with cheap sandals, green, sat straight on the soft, suede sofa, stilled— the solitude, a coffee shop's small thrill to a lone traveler in this bustling scene.