Mirage

The landscape of a weary heart resembles the open desert on a cold moonless night.

Spread out before you on the bleak internal landscape is a banquet of gnawing hunger saturated with pain and longing, a tireless thirst born of sorrows, a chill that seeps into the soul,and the cruel mirage of a distant, lingering hope on the horizon.

The closer you get to the lushness of the mirage, the more trusting in its existence you become. Running towards it with open arms, exhausting your final reserves to get there, you arrive at the place you believed it to be and find the reality of your situation instead.

There you discover that there is no pool to drink from, nothing to quench your parched spirit, no fulfillment and no comfort offered to you. There is, in fact, no one waiting patiently to soothe your aching heart. You are alone with your sorrows and all you have in front of you is more desert, and the continued illusion of hope that you've carried on your back for all these miles and all these months in a bid to replenish your supply.

Too devastated to cry, you drop to the dusty earth and in the silence of your despair, you hear the faint but somehow steady thump of life pulsing through your veins. This is your heart's steady insistence that you and it are somehow still alive.

In a moment of clarity, you realize that this rhythm of survival is what gets you through the burning desert days. This rhythm of necessity is what keeps one foot moving in front of the other. You recognize that somewhere in that rhythm, love and courage are there to carry you each burning footstep towards something you imagine, you hope, you wish will be better. This rhythm keeps you moving through the blinding sunlight.

In the bleakness of the desert night, however, you find that there is only you and your sorrows to keep you warm against the coldness of your shattered life.

There is only you and the silver ribbons of wishful thinking shining through the clouds of doubt and uncertainty.

There is only you and the distant mountains of prayer standing out from the harshness of the desert's shimmering bed.

So there you stand, bleak, cold, and broken -- your spirit frozen by the harsh night's chill -- with your heartstrings tangled up in the prickly arms of the cactus of loneliness that stands at the center of it all.

Your soul bleeds its hurts out onto the dusty desert floor, as the cruel sun starts is ascent once again on the horizon of your damaged, war torn life. Weeping bitter tears you once again place one exhausted foot in front of the other as you head toward the next mirage. The one you believe will change it all, but never does.


© Tanya Anguita