How much of ourselves have we lost along the way? Grasping at pieces shedding from others just to put ourselves together each and every day. Patchwork. Preen ourselves in the mirror because deep beneath we don't recognize ourselves, or the formless shape behind our eyes that lurks and leers and fears the surface light. To be brought into the world, exposed and faced with fight or flight. This shell, this mask, this armor, worn and beaten, held together with hope and faith and tattered, threadbare promises that it'll be a better tomorrow. Feeling cheated. Full of dreams and memories but hollow like the universe, the only sound within the ticking of the clock of time we borrow. In the darkness there is always a fire that consumes, but it's it consuming darkness or is it consuming you? You watch from places unseen as the world moves on because in the past you have something to prove... because tomorrow hasn't happened yet and you can't lose what you never had to lose. But it's time to choose. Everyday. Do you drift into the current of the past or do you fight and swim and struggle to a new day, a new world you'll have to brave? Do you even have the energy left from holding on so tightly to your dreams that try to drift down stream to be awake? Bobbing beneath the water between muffled garbled screams and chokes you hear the cracks and feel debris but is it your lifeline or your soul about to break? But you're wrong about this. This is no ocean, no river or stream, this is a desert without a living thing. You're only fighting against your own hands pulling apart yourself. Turning the very thing you hold precious into a vicious hell. Writing madly in an empty book, filling pages without a tale to tell, no fabled feud or conflicted quarrel to befell. No story, no snake oil, no soul to sell. No truths or lies, no promises or moans to sigh, no tears to cry or testaments to yell. No ink to stain to immerse a quill to pen the words for pages to fill. What has become of us on this night? It seems before we ever had the chance to write the well was dry, but we never failed to try. But we told our story all the same, as we lurked behind the eyes of a person with a thousand faces, but without a name. A shadow full of fear, drowning in a slipstream of time and our own tears. Hopeful, fearful, burning in the dark, eyes alight with madness, glowing with a spark.
May all beings everywhere plagued with sufferings of the body and mind be quickly freed of their illnesses. May the frightened cease to be afraid, and may the bound go free. May the powerless find power, And may people think of befriending one another. Shantideva
