small victories, like firefly sparks like flickering embers smouldering sunlight is not so easily extinguished

treading upon that ancient path (there and back again) dimly lit, the corridors of memory and time ascending and descending those rotting stairs of the ivory tower clarity like lightning flashes than sightless stillness groping in the dark for the way forward the doorways and passages still faintly familiar

the abyss looms ahead but we knew that ere we started this journey the abyss is the end of all journeys but, as the Sages say, the journey is not about the end

in the quiet darkness, my soul unmoving like a baby stillborn in the womb the words are all there is the words are all that matter

no, not dead, just sleeping slow, frozen sleep dreaming of nameless horrors and hopeless doom imprisoned in this chrysalis of life-stealing ice

like a seed sown into the ground ere winter frost

i must wait for the thaw