A Magpie

A lone magpie flies down in front of me, wings fluttering wildly as it begins to peck the earth, no doubt with food in mind.
Oh how I wish the lonesome bird would find a partner, I truly do. It would be much better for all of us if it did.
From my own position, sitting on a damp bench surrounded by finality, my mind is in disarray. The cold winter's day is enough for my own breath to appear in front of me, my thick woolen coat offering less than desirable protection from the biting weather. I take a glance at my coal black rucksack, making haste to push the protruding coil of hemp back inside of its depths.
A magpie without a partner would simply not do at all.
I have a partner myself. My counterpart, other half, ego balancer, he keeps me in check. Though some ways in which that manifests are debatable in their benefit to me. Alas, we coexist, him and I, and what a pair we make. 
Granted, his decisions have interfered in the most unsavoury ways, at crucial moments, in fact. There are only so many times that I can evade prying eyes when he makes such a pig's ear out of my meticulousness.
And, come to think of it, when judgement called my name; when my execution was to take place, the chance to finally repent, he answered instead. Wrenched me away from my destiny, tearing open a wound that was almost healed.
And now what?
Now I must deal with the mental motivation to follow through, to get my second wind, in the wake of his choices. All because he could not stop himself from emerging, from rearing his ugly head in my finest hour.
We are not the same, doesn't he understand?
He is nothing like me, my antithesis, and yet he exists just as much as I do, as tangible as I am.
He simply does not, no, cannot fathom the process.
The understanding that sin has crept into my veins is a hard pill to swallow, but it is one in which I must ingest.
We gave into my selfishness, as much as he denies it, as much as he tells me it was I and not he. Two sides of a coin are made of the same material, old friend.
Hedonistic, transgression heavy and blight ridden, that is my existence. And who do I have to blame? Not the ones who weep for their lost sons, nor the ones who weep for what my mouth has uttered. I am the sole pair of shoulders, akin to Atlas and the world.
My tongue is a barbed, poisonous thing, and I ought to have it removed.
Oh, but my hands, my hands are brutish.
Weapons of war, harbingers of grief, and where words scald the hands incinerate. Intense, vibrant hemorrhages wherever they struck, and he disapproved. He hated the colour, hated how I'd treat them like filth. If only he'd spoken up sooner, if only he'd been stronger. My soul wouldn't be quite so tainted with the stain of death.
But even now, he will not allow me to repent, even now he cries that there are those who care, still. He, the moral compass, tells me to hold on. The bitter irony of it all is confusing to no end. He should be condemning me for being unable to help myself, for being morbidly curious of my own deeds; but even as I sit amongst the rows of stone, he remains steadfast.
I will be victorious, old friend.
He managed to hinder me, decided to throw his spanner in the works, but he will no longer hinder me now. I am in control, the master of the mind, not the servant.
I shift in my seat, glancing at that Magpie, fruitlessly searching for a worm in the hard, frost ridden earth, unaware that it is partaking in an exercise of futility.
And, to my bewilderment, a second flies over, the two standing proudly, confident that their joint efforts will reward them with the juicy invertebrate, or perhaps one will simply steal from the other, instead.
I smile.
Despite all my woes about him, he is a comfort, a reassurance that someone still cares, still has my interests at heart, even if misguided and woefully ill educated in what must be done now.
And so, as I stand, taking a last gaze at the grave I have helped to build across from me, I feel content, finally.
His stubbornness notwithstanding, I enjoy his company, and I shall truly miss him, a diamond in the rough.
He's there, he's always there.
But god has left me, and I will accept my fate this time, whether he approves or not.
Category:ZugZuwang
Category:Mental Illness
Category:Weird