A Journey of Hope

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.