Challenge

Are you there?
I call you forth, darkness!
Come forward!
I call upon you, light!
Come forward.
I challenge the earth, the sea, and the sky!
Come forward all, and heed my words.
I shall endure your hardships, and emerge the stronger,
Or die in the attempt.
You, darkness, my fear of the unknown.
The fear I kept out with morals and ideals.
But as I live, these shields rust through,
And their splendour grows dull.
The boundaries between us melt, and I look into you.
I see there echoes of myself, and I understand;
I understand the unknown, because it is I.
I am the frailty of humankind, the failings of it.
The dark forgotten corners that few admit they have.
We all share them, and we are all human.
Light. My fear made visible.
My knowledge given form.
You are the future I see heading towards me at the speed of life.
The apprehension I have of things I know will happen.
I cannot escape you, but I dread facing you;
But all in all, I have faced you time and again.
I have passed through your fires unscathed.
I shall pass again, and live to tell the tale,
For you are that trial that shall purify my soul with insight.
Sea; huge and difficult to touch and hold.
Ever elusive.
I plunge into your depths, you surround me, yet you are not.
I cannot clutch you, you are incorporal, unreal.
Water is a promise, cool, refreshing,
A lie, salty, cloying.
Earth; betrayer! What bonds did we forge?
I have stood with you throughout my life,
Yet you are an aberration.
What trials we have shared,
What words have gone between us!
I have bled for you, yet now I am fogotten.
The wide desert swallow you!
I shall not wait. Though I want to forgive,
I know not how I shall forget.
And you, sky, vast and beyond my reach!
So far away, unattainable.
Yet I do not wish to attain you.
Tempest. Wind. Lightning.
I do not wish your acquaintance at all.
Stay far away from me, as we were never meant to be joined.
Remain you, and I shall remain me,
and in the difference we shall prosper.
Your wrath is great, but so is mine;
You may think you own this world I inhabit,
But you do not.
We share it, all, and you merely look down on us,
Disapproving, angry.

Your cries of anger are the rantings of a small, spoilt child.

Though you think you are mighty, you are insignificant.
Personify yourself, then, you vast emptiness,
And dash your brains out on the earth's rocks,
Or drown in despair seeking in the sea.
I care not.
For I shall best you all and emerge the stronger.
So hear my challenge; the gauntlet is thrown.
"I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul"
Defiant, I stand, before you all.
Lay on, foes, single or several, and cursed be he who first cries
"Hold! Enough!"