"The Wandering Outlaw of His Own Dark Mind..."

An intriguing character he must be, who is unwelcome to his own thoughts. Where is it he wanders, when exiled from, but trapped within the same place? What mental torture that would be. He cannot belong, yet cannot escape. He knows himself enough to be uncomfortable with his mind, and even outlaw himself from it. Who does he protect? Does the darkness endanger himself? A loved one? An enemy? It cannot be easy to let anyone grow intimately close, when you know your very being is corrupt.

The more she knows him, the closer she grows to his heart, the closer she creeps toward the shadows that loom inside him. Will it be worse for her or for him when she discovers his true nature? Maybe he never reveals it. Maybe he keeps it locked away. She always reaches, not knowing what she wants to find at her fingertips, but knowing he is keeping a part of himself just out of arm’s reach. Maybe she catches a glimpse in the corner of her eye, at the edge of her vision, fleeting glances of shadows in his eyes. He denies anything less than total transparency, while constructing a brick wall before her.

It drives them apart, slowly, gradually, hammering mercilessly as a drop of water on stone. She needs to know what it is that she does not know. He invests so much energy into making her believe nothing exists that she does not know. It drowns them, chokes them when they want to speak. Silences scream for speech that can never quite be heard.

He would die before admitting that he is less than the person he has shown her. That person is the one he desperately wants to be. He yearns to be the man she loves, the man who holds her when she cries, the man whose face she touches just before her lips touch his. That man does not dwell inside his body. That man is a stranger that he can only pretend to be. If only he could find that person in the world. He would give all he had just for the opportunity to step into that man’s skin and discover the secret to truly becoming the man she thinks he always has been.

A quiet tear slips down the curve of her cheek while he skillfully paints a loving smile onto his lips and tries to keep it from cracking. In the end, she cannot remain. The pain of his invisible deceit is too hard to bear, and she surrenders. As he watches her fade away, his wall crumbles and the darkness held at bay by her light spills in to fill the her-shaped void now left in his soul.