I live in darkness so thick, I can taste it.
It's moist and rich, satisfying my desires almost before they exist.
My life is simply satisfaction - flawless, smooth, and infinite.
The known world is a warm embrace, instilling in me a sense of deep, perpetual fulfilment.
Time goes unnoticed when life is indefinite. And so mine swiftly becomes a paradox; my satisfaction becomes unsatisfactory.
The lush cream of life turns sour and thin.
My home serves as nothing but a membrane, a membrane repressing the crunchy stimulation that I crave.
I have to break free.
I draw energy from this fresh hunger deep inside me, and am pulled outside by a magnetic force.
There is an attraction between the vigour within me and a dynamic existence that I can feel, strong and sure, outside the membrane.
I writhe, twist, struggle and thrash.
The more I move, the sharper the scent.
Light is blinding, deafening, and dumbfounding.
It overflows my thirst for freedom, and it's all I can do to keep still, awestruck, as I wait for my body to settle.
After a while, I become gradually aware of a smudge of blue above me, laced in peachy wisps.
It's as if it possesses a kind of gravity, drawing me forth into the crisp air, radiating golden energy.
Shards of crystalline bird song sparkle above me, and I flex joints that I didn't even know I had.
The ground beneath me shrinks, and the space around me floods with pristine blue.
Leaves whisper to the wind of my triumph.
They shimmer and scintillate, sharing in my golden glee.
This flight is the peak of my existence.
The dynamic definition I find outside my log seems to stop time, if only momentarily.
I have never before known what it means to be truly alive, always ignorant of the immense presence of space, light, and the parallel lives that exist in the leaves and sounds that surround me.
But after the emergence, my limited source of vivacity depletes until I can no longer hold myself up.
There is no more yearning, no desire yet to be fulfilled.
My emotion evaporated with my energy.
I am spent, and my life dries up like a puddle in the sun.
• By Lydia Anderson, Year 13, Bayfield High School
