Rainbow Redux

ok, so for the past week or so, I've had a line bouncing around in my head. I'm not sure where it came from, and I don't know what it means, but I wanted to do something with it. More accurately, IT wanted me to do something with it. The other day I finally sat down and let it do it's thing. I liked the first version, but then I went back (on a friend's advice) and took another look at it. I'm not sure yet, but I think I like this second version better. By the way, that line? The one that insisted I write it down and let it go? It is the last line here. I hope at some point to use it again, maybe as an opening line to another piece, just to see what would happen.


Untitled

I force myself to blink
away the tears
to shut out the world
to sleep
to dream
to stop dreaming

I see
nothing but darkness
where am I?
who am I?

I rub my eyes
to clear my vision
to make sure I am awake
alive

a light
a glimmer of hope
warm, comforting
yet somehow disorienting
out of place

I close my eyes again
praying that when I open them
I will see nothing
scared to see nothing

Still there
farther away, yet somehow closer
moving, bending
that light
warming me
taunting me

as I take my first uneasy step
toward the light
I wonder -
what is at the end
of a rainbow in the night?

One of the people I sent the first "draft" to asked what it meant, and if it meant I was scared... to be honest, when I sat down to write it, it wasn't about anything more than that one line. It had no meaning. At least not that I intended at the time.

I guess if I were to place a meaning on it now, it would be about what I went through the past few months. I closed my eyes to shut out the world, and tried as hard as I could to shut down my brain and stop thinking about things, cause the more I thought about them the more they hurt. Then the flip side of that is that I didn't want it to stop hurting. If it didn't hurt, would that mean I didn't care anymore? If it didn't hurt, how would I know that I could still feel? That I was still "alive?" so yeah, in that sense I guess it's about fear. Fear of losing touch with myself.

Then the light would be the end of the tunnel. Be it death, redemption, hope, finally getting over it and moving on, whatever... So the rainbow in the night perhaps is all the wonderful things that came from that experience. Changing branches, reconnecting with some old friends, making some new ones... I can chase the end of the rainbow, but will I ever catch it? Do I want to ever catch it? I am getting over things and moving on, but at what cost? What is at the end of a rainbow in the night? Or am I better off not knowing.