The Key?

I want to be out in the reviving air, unstifled by obligation. To smell the freedom elevating my blood, tingling my awed mind. To feel my heart beating inside my ears, leaping like an excited puppy. The hourly cage bars me within, and I beat my head against its burnished bars. The lock rattles with teasing sounds; its gapped keyhole gaping with a jailer's bloodless laughter. God once told me that the key is hidden within. I wish I could find it. Searching through straw and stuffing for that shimmering treasure frays my nerves. The only thing my blackened hands touch beneath the bedding is the cold dead floor. My fingers have memorized my lightless prison: already the blind man's sense comes to the fore. As my grasp on time slips, my sanity falters, and reality merges in dreams.

I am eating ice cream in the noon day heat. The two year old inside me giggles. My teeth are frozen beneath the sun; my head suffers from brain freeze. These are my only concerns. Vanilla, chocolate, almond flavors burst vividly, full of heavenly pleasures. Each bite is better than the last. I am eating ice cream in the sun, thrilled in rich enjoyment. I stoop in for the last bite and my teeth clink against metal.

Ugly metal. Reality's suffocating consciousness. The sweetness remains imprinted on my memory, but my soul tastes bittersweet. Yet I think I am beginning to understand what God intoned so long ago. My key is not temporal. This cognition is my destiny.