Florian Geyer

A girl I distantly knew died. She never reached her 20s.

There’s no words I can pen that express the catatonia. The anguish in silence. The akathisia for an assured and raging soul to spring from me and act with incredible moral conviction.

Crushed by modernity’s atomization into constituent molecules that were easy pickings for the damnable vultures that our world allows, she was no match. Her soul drifted between the frenzied worlds of a million hands grasping, to the mental chaos of illnesses unnamed, to the quiet pondering of a child alone in their backyard under a warm summer’s sun. She was no match for the cruel parameters of our reality.

Why, God, couldn’t it have been me instead. Better yet: Why, God, do you allow this suffering? What lesson could a child possibly derive from their passing? Like for all children gone, we lay our flowers for our Algernons. We stare catatonically as the pedals eek beauty from life’s graying hues, praying to no one for the day where we will somehow be free at last.

I am barely held together by strings of a martial fury. A soundless cry. A raging scream of null. The TV screen drafts in the chaos of an infinite snow, offering to swallow a man whole. A man can surrender if he so chooses. The nightmare is all around, and a cocoon blankets one from the monsters. Many have before, many do now, many will forevermore. But no, he can also rise. Rise up on the suffering of countless legions and pledge himself a Florian Geyer against God’s impossibly cruel wiles. I seize the poisoned chalice of defiance. I drink heartily and merrily, and I do not apologize to the appalled guests of my party.

In our dimensions of space and time, you will always be alive in a sense. Locked into the coordinates of your flourishing and decline. Just as we read the sun’s story 8 minutes past, I know your story projects across our galaxy, a lightmonth now from our shared home.

Dance free amongst the twilight of a trillion stars.