I learned, Man survived because he sang. So I sang. Screeching like a hatchling, fallen from its nest, motherless, I did not know then that I could fly. The opening of my throat, the broadening of my chest, the play of my tongue – they caught me off guard.

No longer an outcast of my own making, I breathe fire. I believed my throat to be slit long ago, I believed that all my power in blood and magma spilled out from that open wound, but now that I feel out my skin, I notice no scars. It was all a lie.

Uneven – yes, uncertain – yes, as weak as my voice has ever been, I command it. It is as much an instrument of my will and a reflection of my inner world as any other fragment of my self. My mistake was to have so little love for it – a cruel, demanding master.

Now, I know a few songs, but I know and love them like a mother knows and loves her children – each and every valley, each and every summit, their twists and turns, the tapestry of voices merging together. They ring true every time, in a language springing from my distant past.

In a life before this, I must have sung those same songs. In a land far to the north, on a voyage in the far east, the uncharted west and the deep south. Now I sing them here. To my ear, they are as new and rejuvenating as they have ever been.

Souls, just like mine, once wrote them. I wonder, do they still wander in the endless cycle of time, or do they sing in the halls of our Lord, sword in hand, trembling, ecstatic?

One day I will join them – when I myself cease to wander.

Perhaps, I might even write a song of my own.

Perhaps, I might sing it, far into the future, not knowing that it was me who wrote it.

17.09.2020