Simplistic Innocence...Simplisity in it's simplest form.

The phrase reverberated in my head as I rode in the back of a Joe Baxi. I was going home. Things look so strange to me when I get out of the city. The sun had just gone below the horizon. The sky had a deep blue shimmer with silver trimming the clouds and lacing the sheer cover of night. The forest canopy framing the spectacle which no artist could render or writer put into words. The brilliant greens, browns, and oranges given a sheen from an earlier drizzle. The dirt road in dark, heavy contrast against everything. The headlights of the Joe Baxi giving an altered perspective of everything in it's potent range. A tantalizing contrast from the neutrals I was so used to. My head was swimming, I felt drunk. With my head light and weightless. Although I knew I was perfectly sober. Or was I? I have been neglected by such vibrant color. Now seeing it all in such abundance is making it painfully overwhelming. I have become inebriated by consuming something that holds so much life. In contrast to all the death I have become accustomed to. I have lost all acquaintance with life, beauty, and color and being exposed to it makes my feel drunk. My head swam with the colors and a low melody coming from the Baxi's radio. Instead of hearing an upbeat fast rhythm the rhythm and time signature was slowed and I was consumed by a haunting melody. It suggested a slow steady rocking and blurring.

This place is so untouched by soiled hands. I wonder how I can be associated with it. It feels like the world made some sort of error in it's equation of life.

"Are you okay back there?"

I simply nodded, I couldn't speak, I felt the nausea rising from within me.

"So what brings you here?", the driver continued.

"I dunno."

"If you dinnae mind me sayin', ye sure dinnae look like you belong owt here in the wilderness."

I nodded again. Of course I don't belong here, this is the place of the innocent. Innocence is a virtue that left me when I shut my eyes and became blind to it. I loath it. I beat it. I molested it. I sent it away when I finished using it like some demented lover. I could no longer hide the fact that I didn't own it anymore. So I killed it like the killer I was molded to be.

I want it back.....

I looked at the driver and pondered his previous question.

What did bring me here?

Something inside me told me to run away. And I listened. I didn't know why I ran at first, but now I see that Avalanche had gutted my psyche. What they had done to my body was no matter. My body is expendable. Feeling their anger and fury against my skin is nothing. Weapons are nothing. That's right...our battle was nothing to me. It hurt me but it was just a flesh wound. But that doesn't mean I left that battle unscathed and without scars.

Their innocence hurt me. They will never know it, and if they did it would seem redundant that something like that scarred me. Some people say it would be my ego trying to find some sort of excuse to make up for lost pride. And maybe it is. But all I can say is, innocence can be a deadly weapon.

To be with such purpose, dignity, and honor. It hurt me, a person with every one of those virtues lacking in fiber. What makes innocence so powerful is the naivety that comes as a side effect. When you hurt someone with innocence you don't know you are doing it. The deed is done guiltless. It's like driving a knife into someone over and over without noticing it. And each time it cuts deeper and deeper with more pain at each stroke. It hurts to see someone better than you. And every time you see them you want to possess their moral fiber and everything that makes them the person they are. But you know you can't be that person, or have what they have. And it hurts. And they don't know they are hurting you. So they don't stop...it's like they were taunting. But it's not their fault. How could they possibly know? They're innocent. It hurts inside, in places not registered in a medical book. And seeing the tormentor reopens the wound and it cuts deeper. And it festers.

So I left. And I came back home. Where the innocence heals rather than wounds. As I see my childhood home nestled in the mountains I can hear a freedom anthem building in my ears. Watching everything around me as a bystander I begin to wonder about all the valuables that I've lost. If emotion and virtue were valuable antiquities kept in a china cabinet for all the world to see in it's splendid, beautiful glory I wonder how many of those valuable antiquities I would've broken so I could take them down and throw them away. So the world would no longer be able to see them. How much emotion would I have left to show off to the world? I doubt it would be as splendid as a person with a full intact cabinet of emotion.

The driver pulled up the shanty driveway, I paid him what was due and saw him off. I stood on the front step and let everything sink in. And also to let my surroundings absorb me. It was not normal for me to be back here. I'm sure my surroundings had to do some adjusting to my infestation.

There was hardly a moon and all the color and life that had previously painted the sky and welcomed me on my trip home had all disappeared and was replace with the neutral uniform that I had become so accustomed to. Tomorrow morning I know I will be shot with life when the sun reopens my eyes to my boyhood innocence. But for now I would soak up my surrounds in the stillness I was used to seeing. I took off my shoes, socks, jacket and shirt. Leaving only my pants and undershirt. I walked threw the little cottage and went out the back. I ran deep threw the backwoods getting myself lost like I used to and I forgot all the pain I caused and the pain I felt. For a moment I was brought back to my childhood innocence.

~save tomorrow

feel today...say goodbye, to yesterday

feel no sorrow, just be free

total ecstasy

tomorrow...~

~fin