a fitful dream in a fitful night . . .
hot, humid, stifling . . .
a temperature you didnt know a night could reach . . .

i saw ryuk.
from death note.
back at the beginning, where he started.
he was bored and restless
and trampling on something shiny.

& oh, how it shined!
it hearkened to me like a siren,
glittery and luminous like a million diamonds,
"help me," it said.
i screamed for him to stop,
not to break it,
to leave it alone.

& he actually listened to me.
he stood still & looked at me
the same way he looked at Light.
a mix of confusion, curiosity,
& the arrogance of any shinigami.
"help me," he said, outstretching his hands,
& i realized that his arms were tied together
grotesquely, intricately, whimsically.

he wasnt trying to break it.
he just couldnt pick it up.
and his frustration & despair
led him to destroy
the only beautiful thing he ever found,
roaming the grey wasteland of Death.

shaking the tangled mass at me,
he desperately needed my help
but my help, he didn't want.
offended that i hadnt understood,
angry that i had yelled,
he drew away & he cursed me
to a life of foolish sin.
with ice frozen over his eyes,
the death-ghost glided past,
wounded, abandoned, defeated.
because i didnt understand.

a devastating despair
conquered my heart like a shadow
as the worst memories of my life
cruelly replayed in front of my eyes.
but i was shocked to find
that among those hated memories,
i saw those happy days that i had promised,
i had promised to keep them close to my heart.
what happened?
what did i do?
why am i seeing them now?
among flashing scenes of death,
blood,
war,
and tears?

then the Wasteland disappeared
and i was Armstrong,
looking down at the Earth for the first time
& i saw all of its people, as fireflies
with brilliant stars of light inside their hearts.
the view zoomed in on certain individuals
with carving knives in their hands,
slicing at that light,
trying to tear it out,
shredding their own skin.
i couldnt understand why!

& before i knew it, they turned on each other
with those bloodstained knives.
homes and fields and forests and flags burned . . .
a child's hand in the palm of its mother
turned into a massacre of bullets
parents and grandparents lost their lives
at the hand of the child they nurtured.
the capital city in chaos and ruin,
corpses spread out across the streets,
screams and cries and horrible explosions,
even an infant didnt have the light anymore.
in the midst of it all, i looked up
to see a deathgod with tangled arms.
flying above the smoke.
laughing.
this wasnt a dream.

each and every person i saw today,
i saw you as fireflies.  with your own light.
some of you are trying to destroy it
picking at it, tearing at it.
some of you are using it like a gun
killing people you dont understand.
some of you are trampling on it
because you dont know what else to do with it.
everyone who can stand is fighting,
everyone alive has scars that wont fade.
but who said scars wont make your light shine brighter?

now ive figured out
what ryuk was dancing on.
it was the source of our light,
a single hope, a collective dream.
what it was doing in the Wasteland,
i have no idea.
but i dont want to be there
the day it shatters into a million pieces
the day our light goes out
the day our world becomes the Wasteland
the day we become shinigami ourselves.
because thats all deathgods are --
shells of humans who have no light & no spark,
no motivation to live anymore,
no ambition except to hurt and be hurt.
thats all it takes.
hotaru vs. shinigami . . .
who will win?

~ L a n .