Above me the sky is brightening to a dark electric blue. The first signs of impending dawn. I keep walking, my steps staking out a twisting track through it all. And I keep my head tilted upwards, looking at the sky. The sky is beautiful. No, that's not right. Beautiful is not the right word. The sky sparks with this energy, with this realness, with this glow of life that other things do not have. 

I feel as if I'm feeling the sky more than looking at it. I feel as if I'm melting into it, almost. Like the lines between myself and the sky are being erased until I am annihilated into the endless expanse of life above me. 

The sky turns soft purple, the clouds glowing pink. And then eventually it's the light blue that it always is. I keep on watching it. I keep on walking. I'm feeling the barest edges of tiredness linger about me now, but I'm still not tired yet. The air is frigid but I can only feel the barest edges of its sharpness. I do not know when I will collapse but when I do it won't be pretty. 

I have no idea which part of the city I'm in now. I just know that I have to keep going. This is good, though. If I have no idea where I am, that means that the police or whatever other authorities are looking for me also have no idea where I am. It means I'm safe. Well, not really safe. But as close to safe as I can be. 

I wonder if I will have the strength to keep walking when I am starved and death is near me. I think I will. The people in the desert were able to keep on walking until they died. And they were all normal people like me. I will have to will myself on. 

The longer I stay in one place the likelier it will be that the authorities find me. 

I think of school. I feel great now that I'll never see it again. School always left a bad taste in my mouth. And it wasn't the learning that was hard. It was the people. The atmosphere. The oppression that was woven into the very building itself. It won't be pressing down into me any longer. All it is now is a memory that will become lighter and lighter as my soul starts leaving my body. 

I wonder if my soul is already leaving my body now. I've gone a day without food or water. A day without sleep or rest. A day out in this coldness. That must be enough to get me started. Started in the process of dying. 

I wonder again why I am so keen to die. But as always, the answer is right there. It's the only path for me. The only path to freedom. 

A slumber did my spirit feel. I had no human fears. She was a thing that could not feel, the touch of human years. She has no motion now, no force. She neither hears nor sees. Rolled round in earth's diurnal course. With rocks, and dirt, and trees. 

I say that poem to myself over and over and over again. Until it feels like a part of me, like a very intrinsic part of me, is one with the poem. Not with the words of the poem. No. Not with the way it flows and rhymes. I couldn't care less about the way it flows and rhymes. I am taking into myself instead the message of the poem. The peace and the oneness brought by death. 

It's a rather simple idea really. An idea born of the knowledge of what death really is. An idea born of feeling the wind blowing against your body. It's an idea anyone could have, if they bother to look within themselves. Not that anyone bothers to look within themselves. But still, if they did have that idea, they would find a sense of peace. 

I wonder. I've never, ever had anyone to share my ideas with. I've never had anyone I could show even a shred of honesty to. It tears me up inside. It leaves me feeling lost, lost, lost and washed out and hollow. My life would be so much better if I had someone, anyone, to share it with. But I would have to cut and sand and grate myself in order to fit into the perfect mold that I'd have to be in in order to have friends. 

I take a deep breath and I walk on through the daytime. The winter sun offers barely any warmth. But I am so wrapped up in - is it adrenaline? - that I barely feel it. 

I wonder if God is helping me. Not that I believe in God. No-one does. We all just believe in science. But I've read about God before. And it's a beautiful idea. I always really wanted to believe in it. Believe that some force was out there, latently powerful, helping us in secret ways. 

Though I guess the God I believe in is not the God that the history people believed in. Their God was an extension of their national pride. Was an extension of their status quo. Was the thing that kept it all in place. 

My God is the opposite of that. 

I have no proof that They exist but I don't know why I believe in Them so much. Right now in the midst of eternity stretched out before me I believe in Them more than ever. 

I smile softly and look up towards the sky. A few fluffy clouds have gathered. The sky is sad along with me. The sky is happy along with me. The sky is waiting along with me. 

I feel the magic within me. It twists and rises and dances. I feel the way that it almost transforms me. I am stronger than I used to be. I am braver than I used to be. I am better than I used to be. I was just as bad as the others before, really. I thought I was better than them because I knew I longed for more. But I did nothing with that longing. Just like all of them did. Now. Now I am changing myself. Now I am changing my life. Now the longing comes to life and to truth within me. 

I walk. And I walk. And I walk on. And I don't feel tired. And I don't feel tired. And the hunger grows within me, grows until it arches cavernous. But I only feel the barest, waving edges of it. The thirst grows within me but through my numbed senses all I can feel is a heaviness. My hands and feet start to go numb. But I don't care. 

The sky grows dark and then it grows bright and then it grows dark and then it grows bright as it arches above me. I feel the cycles of day and night move around me and move through me. I feel like I am part of the cycle, with my constantly moving feet. 

But, after uncounted days, I suddenly feel exhausted. The exhaustion that comes over me is unlike any exhaustion that I have ever felt before. My bones, my soul, my consciousness, everything, it's all collapsing. I don't want to go home. Hell no. I still have the strength that I promised myself I would have. But I need to rest. I feel dizzy, feel like collapsing, and I need to rest.

So I find a bunch of garbage bags beside the stone buildings that line the alley. And I arrange them over and around me so that I can still breathe but I am not seen. It smells terrible. But I don't care. I drop down into the welcoming blackness of sleep on the cold, rough ground.

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