Graphic by Jeremy Bishop VIA Pexels
Shadows dance in the flickering illusion as inmates absorb fabrication in an imprisoned gaze. Crawling from restraint, you snake up to the surface and see Plato was wrong. You watch a reality worse than its silhouettes and you cower from your own vision. You retreat into darkness, clamping chains to your wavering limbs, stamping the outside from your enlightenment. The man beside you crouches, kneeling for the cave’s deception, primitive eyes glazed over. There’s glory in his ignorance. A life devoid of opaque distress, taking the shaded outlines of an existence and calling it truth. So you shroud your sight, too, curling into a shrine for his oblivion and discard the world.