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I walk through streets that have grown alien to me. They no longer feel familiar. The scent of this body I inhabit has begun to unsettle me. My disturbed mind is caught in a constant act of flight. I find myself besieged by creatures that exhale decay yet have forgotten how to rot—an abandoned forest of suicide. I cannot conceive of life beyond my dreams.

A bomb exploded, and I took refuge behind a pillar, desperate to escape. Time flowed like water. I felt the searing heat of flames rising on either side. Unfamiliar odors seeped from my flesh—I sensed a fire. Yet I remained oblivious to the acrid smell of my melting skin. I became utterly convinced that pain endures.

The building reborn from the ashes. I came to tend the fragile hopes sprouting within its ruins. I was deliriously happy. I scarcely noticed the blood streaming from my arms. I felt vividly alive. I began to hesitate to give voice to my thoughts. I grew thoroughly accustomed to lying. I was certain this was how I would take refuge in the virtue of happiness. I greeted the faces I once knew with renewed love.

But as brief as my happiness, my dream too was fleeting. At the very moment I did not want to be disturbed by the one from whom I sought upheaval, I was interrupted. Sometimes there are only moments: the smoke swirling in my mind scorches my lungs; moments like faith; moments when my heart outstrips my mind…

I wanted to be baptized by you. I wanted to kneel before you. I wanted to believe in you.

The doors closed. Inside, there was only you and me. I could feel our breaths merging. When the ringing in my ears faded, the first thing I heard was your rising voice. Why were you so angry? Though I tried to defuse the tension before it began, I knew I’d failed. I’ve always been like this. I knew you’d never grasp the worth I placed on him. Perhaps you’ll never meet anyone like me. I tried to show off my superiority complex by remaining calm. My sense of alienation was nothing new.

Through your mounting shouts I barely caught a few words. Why was I repeating myself? I thought about responding, but saw no need. I’ll never understand why my writing always surfaces in my mind during my tensest moments. Unspoken words turn into ink. What remains unsaid fills the pages. It shouldn’t be this way. Some things must be spoken—and, once spoken, truly heard. Aren’t most problems born from the failure to understand what’s been said?

Even though I hate fighting, a part of me has always secretly enjoyed it. If I’d known, while still in my mother’s womb, that war—an indispensable force of evolution—would one day besiege our collective consciousness, would I have opened my eyes at all? A few blows to my chest brought me back. The voices rose even louder because I stayed silent. Then a single sentence slipped from my lips: I love you.

Someone collapses to the ground. I’m trying to discern who it might be. A curious crowd begins to gather—so many people, so many different faces. The air is filled with a stench reminiscent of a massacre—the reek of corpses assaults my nostrils. My stomach churns—I feel like I’m going to vomit.

For the first time, I long to open my eyes; I sense that this is the sole moment in which I can truly behold reality. I crave a life that will blossom through my own death. I’ve always known myself to be a dreamer, and now I embrace it entirely.

Amid the corpses, there is one corpse—amid the tapestry of lived experiences, an ordinary life. I remember the past: how I was once a pure, untainted child, surrounded by others who found no pleasure in my presence.

I feel a relief in realizing that my abandonment is not confined solely to this final moment. I suspect I have led a failed life, and thus, a failed death. My body sprawled on the ground appears so utterly ineffectual that it would scarcely serve as sustenance even for vultures.

I no longer see as I once did…