The Arithmetic of Night: Where Sunless Skies Solve for ‘I’...
When I turned seven, I began to write. Even though I had just learned how to form words, I felt late—as if I were racing against time. My mind spoke in the cadence of literature, lost in labyrinths of wordplay, desperate to escape the maze of its own suffering. It did not trifle with the world. It could not be trifled with by the world. My mind was a woman sated by unlit satisfaction, trapped in a dim and smoky room. The pains I could not voice morphed into enchanted words. If I tried to explain them plainly, they’d stretch into unreadable lengths; if I cloaked them in literary acrobatics, they’d be mistaken for hieroglyphs. If you are reading me, you are fortunate. For you will witness how a woman, imprisoned in profound darkness, discovered black light. And if you understand me, then I am fortunate—for I shall never feel alone again.
I ran from myself relentlessly, until one day I abruptly halted. When escape proved futile in every way, I surrendered. For I realized: one cannot flee to a place where they will not find themselves. What if the** "me"** I claim is the same "me" everyone else claims?
What if the "me" I imagine is not mine alone?
Or worse—what if that imagined "me" is still me?
*These are distinct questions, yet I wander back into the same labyrinth.
Tell me—how do people find joy? Is it with those they love? Or with those who love them?
Does a person truly know what they love? Or do they even know why they love?
Stars plummet from the sky and crash into my heart.
Does the moon chase the night because it is night’s drunkard?
Or does night notice the moon only when the sun vanishes?
I’ve never known a night that refused to arrive, but I’ve known countless days where the moon lingered…
As I ponder this, my eyes blink open to reality:
The night has no affair with the moon.
What makes night night is the absence of the Sun.
