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I saw a mother at the classroom door. Downtrodden, yet just as hopeful. Watching her testament reflected in the glass with timid eyes. Inside is warm and devastating. The confidence within the hunched posture. Trying to crush the bitter burden of life. A face accustomed to denying the destiny it carved for itself. Sad, yet smiling. Reflecting what lies in the eyes, unable to hide it. A life tethered by a first cry after sacrificing one’s own existence for naught. Just a sentiment. The child is still small, unaware of most things.

Sacrifice is often a cliché. The child does not understand. But it will. Time will pass while glancing sideways at the glass. An unstoppable momentum. Moments harboring deep regrets. Those words that never escape the lips. A heavy weight gathering in the heart. Those meaningless words that strike like lightning in an instant, yet are poured into speech only when all is lost. A reckoning that can never be settled, no matter what we do. A very heavy toll. If only some things were understood from the very beginning. If only throats did not have to bear the burden of belated words.

Hours, days, months, and years. A long stride within time. A brief expanse of time occupying space within the fleeting time of the cosmos. The torment of silence. The wandering words of dreams. A multitude of words forgotten upon waking. Harboring the weight of life. The relentless fatigue of the vocal cords. Pregnant with only a mere whisper.

Sleeplessness. For some, it is the greatest truth… the greatest quest. It is the first cause of the dreaminess that emerges in the dark. One begins with it, and ends with it. It is the greatest love a person can possess. One grows weary of the nothingness of night, yet still longs to possess it with one’s whole being. It lends new meaning to the glances cast toward the ceiling. One wants to cut loose from everyone one knows—to slip free of the world’s ceaseless flow within the silence of one’s sleeplessness.

One looks outside from behind the curtain. One greets the streetlights that brighten the darkness. They are the only companions. Hasn’t everything begun from nothing anyway? Deep down one knows that everything was once born in darkness. It is like the sense of safety inside a cave, or the peace felt while it rains. One is dependent on sleeplessness.

At a sound, one startles. At the first light appearing… at a rooster’s crow. With daylight’s arrival, everything has burned away before the first spark even shows. With people’s endless bustle, all bustle is already ended. As the voices rise, one no longer knows what to do. Even the smoke of one’s cigarette blurs in the day…

The time has come to face the greatest fear. One gets into bed. Closes one’s eyes and greets it again. Yet one cannot escape the hazy world within one’s thoughts. One thinks. One reconstructs all that has been lived. One tries to reorder the words that once left one’s mouth, tries to soothe oneself with events that never were.

There is a moment when one is certain one will never possess happiness—when all that darkness, all that sorrow, all of it comes to an end. One has, in truth, awakened… only so far as sleeplessness.

I know I have a single task: a journey of hope undertaken to end all this. In my dreams I was told hope would be there. I heard it among my silent whispers. It was calling me. It needed me as much as I needed it. I have always hated the loneliness of this methane-reeking hell. My lungs can no longer endure the stinging air of this place. I want to set my misery aside and take the road to which fate is leading me.

I jumped aboard a ship about to depart. No one asked why I was there. It felt as if the universe itself were summoning me. I wished they would receive me like a king—even knowing they would not. Sometimes you cannot know where fate will carry you until you set out. The hardest thing is to guess what the first steps will bring.

There is a hope waiting for me in the distance—I know it. I keep repeating this to myself. A continuity… a great stillness. Isn’t happiness often like that? As naïve as letting our first expectations stretch out over time. Time slows. Everything around me turns into a shaft of light. Even the sounds don’t reach me as they used to in the endless dark. I am drifting in a void where time and matter do not exist.

I want to close my eyes. After everything, this burden has begun to feel too heavy. With each passing minute… it’s as if I’m leaving years behind me. I’ve begun to catch the scent of a drought I do not know. Where am I? It told me to leave the ship. Without questioning, I stepped down, slowly. I had learned long ago what it is to be abandoned. In a place I had never known, in an absence I had never known… I trusted it.

I think this is the place I’ve been seeking. This desolation is my home. This is my only hope. I realized it when everything around me began to blur. It was a dream. From the body stretched upon the cross, I let the last drop of my blood fall to the earth.