My Broken Pieces

I sit here tapping my fingers against the keyboard, not knowing what might escape from my mind. I scrape my plate of the worn scraps left over from last midnight’s feast. Then take a gulp of the ecstasy known in disproportion.

I stare more at the screen, waiting for thoughts to rush into my brain. My black bird joins me. Raven, we call him. Feathers so dark I cannot see them, since everything surrounding me is darker than sin. He perches upon my shoulder, hovering, watching my every move. Yet it comforts me, for he is the omnipresence that haunts my sanity. I reach up to pet the silk coating he wears, and he flutters away, into the darkness that suffocates me. I watch him fly away to a far corner, doing little things that he must. Every once in a while, he will stop and look up at me and flit his wings a bit, only to return to his duties.

I feel so cold now. Though such a small thing he is, Raven keeps me warm when perched upon my shoulder. He is like the smallest piece of me that I have been missing since the beginning of time. Somehow I have found that piece, and I am reluctant to let it slip away through the cracks of loneliness, despair, and forgotten revelations. So hard have I worked to mend the broken pieces of myself that lay shattered on floors, on balconies, on roof tops, and on the pedestal of sacrifice. For years I have searched for those pieces, for one cannot begin to heal if one does not find that which has been violated. It would have been a much longer struggle if not for Raven. Throughout his own torment, knowingly or not, he had learned how to seek the broken pieces of others, and he picked those up along his way to keep them for a lonely soul such as myself. I cannot forget the way his shining eyes looked as he first flew through my open window and perched upon my cold shoulder. I cannot forget the way he unwittingly claimed ownership unto that which he returned to me. And I shall not forget the day that he returned my broken pieces to me in a cup named ‘Gothic’.

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