Screams In The Void

I inhabit a nightmare born of a dream. Back when I was a mere boy, cradled by an innocence that made me believe too fervently in the world, unaware of the jagged edges and the snares set in the tall grass. From my seat upon the hill, I scanned the horizon, charting a future I could not yet name. I was a student of shadows, watching those around me, absorbing lessons that some never live long enough to learn. It was a season of "innocent hardship." I was a good child. Not flawless, but wise enough to know my hands held no magic. I knew I could not bend the will of a destiny I hadn't even met. I learned the sharp truth of human cruelty—how some devour, and others squander. I walked a tightrope of discord. I looked for love in the wreckage of arguments. I searched for purity in falling tears, wondering if they were water or poison. While the adults—my broken mirrors—shattered in the eye of the storm, I simply watched. They banked on my forgetting; thirty years later, I am st...

It is a silent delirium, an invisible sting. It thievings the sanctuary of sleep, leaving a hollow zombie in its wake. A swarm of whys and wherefores , of coulds and shoulds . Only the ignorant, it seems, are immune to this rot. I am well-acquainted with my soul—its brittle edges and its iron cores. I know the wounds I deal myself simply to master the pain. At times, my sanity unravels, or perhaps it simply tires of me and wanders off. There are days when I crave nothing but the silence of my own shadows. I hardly know you—you, my midnight specter who tramples my rest, evicting me from dreams after a mere four hours, leaving the ghost of exhaustion etched upon my skin. A nomad’s life without the feast. I long to succumb to a deep slumber and wake when the calendar has turned its pages. Where will I stand when years have passed? The marks I hammer into this childhood soil do not erode; they stand defiant, though I walk this path alone. There goes the shadow of a man who was once there...

 What I seek is no easy find. It is neither common nor mundane; it seeks no ambition, nor does it crave acclaim. What I desire lives upon aged paper—an ancient scribble, a message that carved its mark. It is that shirt, outgrown but worn, bearing the stains of all I have endured. What I want clings and catches without effort; it lingers there, a thing to be touched. It offers me grace, not gold; it grants the smile of true contentment—born of a willing heart, never of debt. What I want is neither bought nor coerced. It is a bounty—earned, conquered, dreamt. It is the realm where "less" overflows with "more," where to subtract is to select, never to lose. Where choices are not merely options, but soul-deep decisions. What I want is the strength that honors the past while weaving the present—for the future is a ghost without the now . From whence I came, to where I stand, and thus, I shall become. It is not tallied in notes, or currency, or cold accounts. It cannot be...