Writing to Fate

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Hans Burgkmair the elder (1473 - 1531). RA Collection
When times became unkind to me, I wrote a prayer to fate, telling it to have mercy on me, for I was but an innocent lamb, and it replied with a noose around my neck and a stool at my feet. I wrote to fate, to tell it that my days had become harsh and unfair, but it told me to sit and pray, like all the other mortals. I told it that my master had closed his eyes and heart to me, but it told me that I was not loud enough. It told me to stand on the rooftop, to rend my clothes and to pierce my skin in holy supplication, but I told it that my knees were weak and my will was like a sunken well, of no use. I told it that I wanted to pray with my heart, but that was where it hurt most and it told me that I was too far from redemption.
I wrote to fate and told it that my lips were chapped and that my throat was raspy, and it told me to accept my sentence, to serve like the prisoner of life, to live trapped like a rogue and greedy mouse. When I pressed it to the wall, fate said to me that I was a victim, and it would grant me the gift of death, whether by guns or swords, I do not know, but now I can see, the poison that flows in my veins, the poison that is blood, the poison that is vigor and strength that has to be fetched from the far reaches of my existence. Fate is replying my letter in its red ink, in the venom that is persistence. Maybe I had been too blind or ignorant to read, for fate always wrote between the lines. Maybe I had been too loud to hear the silent scrawls of the of the carver’s knife engraving in stone, but now that I have gone silent, I pray for peace, for an end, for the gift that fate has wrapped in a box. It was not the answer I wanted, but maybe it was the answer I needed. I wrote to fate, to return me back to the days of my innocence, and it replied with clubs and knives in my back, in my heart

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