Something winked at me from the pavement ahead, a coquettish flash of reflected light like a signal sent straight to my eyes. I blinked, wondering if it was the alcohol's sinuous hold on my synapses, or the ghost of a strobe light from the club I recently staggered out of. It winked again, reaching for the part of me still present. I paused as I approached, looking down.

There! Bathing in a puddle, cloaked in a nest of muddy tendrils, was a marble. It was an angel in a tiny globe, sat amongst the moon and stars reflected from the night sky above, sailing in the seas of neon from nearby bars and club fronts.

As I leaned down to investigate more closely, somebody threw a blanket over life's sound system, the hubbub of 1am Soho fading into a muffled cloud, the steam of irrelevance. The dull pressure of thoughts pushing through my brain like worms through pinholes alleviated slightly as I blinked. Alcohol - a tonic for bad memories and the basis for worse ones.

My questing fingers grasped the marble's smooth surface and I freed it from its grimy dwelling, lifting it to my face. A few dirty marks clung like grit on an eye, so I blew them away as best I could until there was just a teardrop of puddle water that nestled onto my thumb and traced a route down onto my palm.

I looked deep into the glossy orb, seeing the bloodshot reflection of my pointlessness in its surface, but something achingly apt within. There she was again - a fluted shape encased in resin to some, perhaps, but an angel to me, with wings of diaphanous iridescence fluttering around a rainbow core of beauty and personality.

"Come with me," I heard, a breath upon a breeze upon the air, the only sound to puncture my world at that moment. "I can help you."

With that, I felt a great rushing, of my whole self subsumed, easing forward, my gaze drifting into her world of perspicacity and peace. Like a soul questing deep into a womb, I swept forth, welcomed, blissful, and simply aware.

And just like that, I was inside looking out, a yolk of thought with a three hundred and sixty degree viewpoint. Life, with its grime and intrusion, could no longer hurt me.

From within this marble, I see all, for this was my epiphany, my understanding, the meeting that opened my eyes like a veil was peeled back from the world. No more, the waste of perception, no more, the mirror that only stares back. I'm on the other side, now, eye to eye with love and existence, my former sadness floating like a lullaby heard through a dream.

I know my place.

I ... am a poet.