Pedestals and Promises

There's one piece there.

it looks snowy and bright, it shimmers in its bath of sunlight.

but it is only a piece, alone.

just a fragment that makes one wonder how it must have looked when it was whole...

but no one finds beauty in just the piece, the fragment.

no one sees it, but what it could have been.

find yourself pitying it, wishing to make it whole.

There's another piece.

this one is in the shadow, it may be white, it might shimmer or glow,

if only the light would hit it.

it is barely seen. it is in the dark.

if not for a slight difference in shadow, the gentle wave of a darker grey beneath it,

you'd never see it.

but you want to see it.

There it is. In the smooth slab of shadows, this darker piece mars the velvet grey, reminding of a darker place.

is it there only to lift the piece in the light to a plane higher than the light could achieve on its own? is it there only as a pedestal? is it nothing more than a support beam?

can good only be so when bad exists?

Go pick up the grey one. Hold the white shimmering piece in the other hand.

which is larger? hold the one hand in the shadow, the other in the light, as close together as possible, so close, but worlds apart for that one not-line, that demanding, unforgiving, unrelenting border between the world of the light, so pale and shrinking from the world of shadow.

hold them there, so close, yet so far from each other.

which is more beautiful?

they are two halves of a whole.

which is your choice?

they are both of a forceful beauty, one of presumptuously promising delicacy and purity, perhaps delivering its promise, perhaps more guileful, more deceptive in its glowing audacity.

they are both of a forceful beauty, the other of a rich, tempting presence.

which is more honest?

the darker seems overwhelming, the white forgotten, and all its promises that seem so unreachable forgotten with it.

"Look at me!" is the dark half's cry. "You don't want to see, but you can't help but look! You know you may be horrified, but you can't stop watching.

"You want to look away, but you want nothing more than to see all the sensationally disturbing angles, shadows, and jagged edges that I possess!"

turn your head back to the white.

the jagged edges of the white in your left hand sparkle.

it is snow.

touch it.

And now pull your hand away, see the defacement of your scarlet life-liquid disturbing the righteous glow of the white. See how even the good has deceived, promising a delicate touch, giving only pain. The dark promised darkness, a simple enough guarantee, it delivered.

The white promised beauty.

It gave nothing (but pain).

the dark promised nothing.

it gave all.