The Cave

 

I never saw total darkness until I was eighteen. 

My entire childhood, when the sky shed her baby blue sundress and billowing sunset fabrics of pinks and oranges and lavenders, and donned the midnight cloak at put the world that dared look upon her to sleep, I was always anchored by the silhouette of waving fingers in front of my face. 

That all changed the first time I entered a cave and obeyed the command, "lights off." 

A beautiful panic set in, a magical anxiety when my eyes were opened but shut and desperately grasped at whatever photons managed to survive beneath the harsh and unforgiving environment for light beneath the Earth. 

You feel dizzy, extremely dizzy, like you would not be alive and there if it wasn't for silt beneath the fingernails and the sound of blood pumping in the veins beneath the congealed batter of Earth and mud.