Journey of Roads

A walk becomes a journey.

Long after death, after life, is when your soul wanders freely throughout the earth. Sweeping through oceans and hills, down roads and into homes. Wandering through thick evergreen forests, dense windy deserts and starlit cities of bright lights. Dark, small towns pass by, never ending prairies lay ahead, streams of rivers rush behind you. You are free, and very much so, just until nature beckons for you to live and breathe once again. Each time, entering into a new being, a small, neutral being, before taking your first harrowing and contained breath. Your life begins again and again as this cycle repeats.

Your first gasping breath;

The lasting, ending exhale, before your soul is once again liberated to travel and lose itself to the wind.

Each time, you are thrown into a different life, some lives much more different from the last.

And each time you take an unknown step towards your path, your new life begins to change and unfold. The minute your wary steps make a turn in your individual lives, another fork in the road is made, dragging you deeper into the endless labyrinth of possibilities, of lives lived.

And thus, a mere walk, a mere, simple walk, becomes a journey to the end.

*****

Your first life is mundane, simple, almost as if in preparation for the times ahead. The same blue skies, the identical hills and roads, constantly walking on the same long path to life. You are someone named Avery, buzzing about in a life of simplicity and contentment, the pride and light of your life a small little family of four with a witty, mischievous dog named Goldie.

All is well. There is nothing more you'd hope for.

And yet there are those days, were you look up at the pallid moon amidst the calming darkness in the middle of the night, where hardly anyone remains awake. Where your wife sleeps beside you, a wonderfully warm presence, your own head comfortably tucked beside her shoulder but your eyes remain ever so clear and awake. Not the least bit of fogginess for sleep to take over. It's in this time that your curiosity begins to take over. Staring up at the ceiling, speckles of shadows and light blending together, intertwined, you curiously wonder what adventures and excitement you might've had living another life. Would you have yet again lived in subtle pleasantness? Or would things happen differently, far too differently to recognize your own self in that life that you'd live? Many things have shaped your being, you can only imagine what a different version of yourself in a different life could be like.

Perhaps you will one day find out.

The final moment is of deadly silence being punctured by screeching car alarms, shattered glass shining brightly under the glow of a streetlight. Your lungs feel weak, your head is dizzy with shock, your neck is burning with pain. How could you have fallen asleep whilst driving?

The impact from the crash had crushed the front part of the car, you were sure of it. And as much as you wished you could, you could not turn back time now, not even if you begged to do so.

You close your eyes, hoping your wife will forgive you, and regret filling the cavity of your chest. She would have to raise the kids on her own now, and you might never catch a glimpse of their blossoming futures ahead, no matter how much you desperately want to.

But you have never strayed from the road that is your life, and even now when you have reached the end of it, you stop at the very end, taking one last breath in the cold, eerie night.

*****

It's funny how life works.

One day you might be living at the top of the world, seeing everything there is to see and enjoying the pleasant view from above. The next, plummeting down into a deep hole surrounded by only darkness, comforted by an image of emptiness. Life is cruel to you in this way. Cruel to link you to a life you could now only ever dream of, no matter how dull it seems.