My Author's Intro isn't working for some reason... anyway, this still needs some work, but here it is anyway... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I'm reaching for the forbidden fruit that I know I will regret taking. Yet still I stretch and pine for it. In my heart, I know it's wrong and I know it could annihilate everything I've worked for. I long to have just one small taste to feel the cool sweetness on my lips. This sweetness overpowers everything else and leaves me craving, starving, and thirsting for more. I satiate my hunger by filling myself with this ambrosial fruit. And just as I've had my fill, the guilt, the regret and the betrayal wash over me and I become flooded with shock. At that moment I realize that things will never be the same again. I begin to ache as the fruits stormy reaction from our encounter takes hold of me. All I can do is wish that I had never made such a huge blunder in the first place. If only I had let things be, if only I had resisted the temptation as the fruit slowly expired and left me liberated from its daunting grasp. Instead, I am forced to cope with something that I can't even begin to comprehend. And I'm forced to do it alone. It's like solitary confinement in the four walls of my mind. My thoughts are fluttering around like a cluster of steel butterflies. I am overcome with a great sense of agony, a physical and mental torture chamber. My head is spinning and I'm sure that I am living my last moments. In a fragment of a second, I know my entire being will shatter into a million and a half pieces... And suddenly my world comes back to me in a sort of Alice in Wonderland kind of way. And all is as it should be. No pain, distress or anguish. There is no evidence of any of those things ever existing here. I sigh with relief as my life resumes its usual place in the world. And I know that if I am to ever pass a tree, with that tempting, forbidden fruit, that I will pass it, knowing that brief happiness isn't worth the wrath of the consequences that will come.