The Human Condition

Plato said we were created with two heads but I think that’s wrong. We were created with wings. But we were arrogant and it would be our downfall. All our hubris, our faithlessness (faith in ourselves), turned us hard-- our hearts and wings are made of stone (marble). Like angels never meant to fly. Like gargoyles forever frozen in grotesque horror, perched on the walls of places we dreamed of escaping. We made our own Labyrinth (our own heaven) (our own hell). And we were so convinced we could leave it behind if only we tried hard enough. But we’ve got glass eyes and skeletons made of clay. We’re porcelain dolls; empty, eerie dolls harboring runaway heartbeats. We were never meant to see more than this world. Never meant to move. Because we’re all one step too far away from heaven (one step too far away from each other). I am miles away from everyone, encased in marble, waiting to be carved out. ​Because for all our weaknesses we refuse to break. We just change our shape. We are each David, freed from the marble, as much as we are Icarus fallen from grace. We were made with wings. We were cursed in rock and glass and painful loneliness. And we are creating art out of our misery. Building museums full of beauty inside our prisons. We were dragged down to the earth by the weight of our failure, crushed into submission, and we’re still finding ways to fly, still turning our pain into light. We’ve always been art waiting to come back to life.

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