Daniel's Theme

I'm running.Down the steps.

Out the door.

Onto the street.

My breathing is even.

Classical piano blares through my earbuds,

allowing the melodies of Philip Glass to take me away

to another time, another place.

My heart rate accelerates as the notes ascend.

I'm calm.

Focused on my breathing and the music around me.

The edges of my reality blur.

My feet and legs move without my say so.

Like a well-developed machine, they carry out their duties.

With speed and precision, they carry me away from all that I

wish to escape.

His words become interwoven with the melody and I feel myself

becoming caged in entirely new ways.

I'm not even looking where I'm going.

The pavement collides with the treads of my trainers;

I feel the sensation radiating up through me.

I can't stop.

I press on.

Intoxicated by the scene Tchaikovsky is painting for me and moved

by the beauty of his intellect, I speed up.

The city dissolves around me.

Elements of time and my spatial awareness no longer exist.

I move on pure instinct;

somehow always anticipating the movements of that around me before I

can see them.

I'm not visually impaired,

but everything is more or less colourless blurs.

I can see, but I do not observe.

I don't take anything in.

I don't allow myself to experience anything other than the reality

I've submerged myself in.

My consciousness is drowning in sensations I cannot clearly define.

It's as if every word I've ever learnt has seeped out of my head and is being left

in pools on the ground by my trainers each time one of them makes contact with the

pavement.

I feel the melody in my veins.

It's haunting and welcoming all in one.

It's familiarity opens doors to both the past and present.

His words, his beauty, his desire.

It all rushes through me and for a moment I'm almost overtaken by desire.

My heartbeat competes with the radiation of each cord,

each desperately wanting to be noticed;

what they don't know is that I hear them both, I feel them both.

Everything is alive inside of me.

A symphony of biological chemical reactions is taking place inside of me

at this very moment.

Endogenous opioids collide with serotonin,

mixing with mood stabilisers and antipsychotics.

Oxygen rich blood swirls through me,

dancing with the chemicals in my veins.

Chemicals sustain me.

Chemicals threaten to undo me.

Each day I race the clock atop a tightrope existence.

I press my back against the protective walls of St. Paul's and slide

down to the cold ground below.

My skin is saturated with moisture,

I feel a slight chill as the cool night are caressed the tattoos

that decorate my forearms and throat.

Despite all the hell I endure,

there is no one I'd rather be in love with but you.