Pink Worm Monologue

The clouds roll by saturated with teardrops, evidence of the burden they carry. Pure blue is wiped from the sky, replaced by a gun-metal gray shot through with a bruised night. The trees shudder with chills as they brace themselves for the downpour. Then, the clouds slow down, dragging themselves forward, bogged down by the weight of their luggage. A few tears spill, darkening the earth at the points of contact. They pause. Should they move on, move just a little bit farther? No, thunder and lightning follow, the first heart-wrenching sob that unleashes torrents of grief. As the clouds above hold each other while they weep, I watch as a small, pink worm pushes through to the surface emerging from the tear-streaked soil. The world rages around him while he tests the air and gathers his bearings. It is not cautious, nor contemplative;

The doubt, that’s my weakness. It’s what makes my pace a halting one filled with full-speed sprints that leave me panting for breath. Those vulnerable moments where the pressure catches up to me and the doubt sets in. Why am I going through all of this? What could possibly wait at the end? Worse, what if the end isn’t what I thought it would be? All the times that I stumbled and fell and picked myself up and kept running, kept running with bruises and pain and a heart tinted with shadows of doubt, kept sprinting towards the unknown just as the earthworm does, that would all go to waste. And I would be left lost, irreparably broken by regret at the lifetime I wasted. It’s this fear that makes me weak and sucks out the will to go forward. I don’t know how close my dreams are. They could be dancing just out of reach like fireflies dashing just out of an innocent child’s fingertips teasing with a challenge. Will I chase after them this