Human. Sits. Eclipsed. Stares ahead into the starless, pitch-dark. Eyes wide, mesmerized, yet see nothing. A quiet sphere, lonesome too. Hears only the rattle of same multi-laned highway of circling thoughts, round and round like the digit eight. Infinity never felt more imprisoning. Feels pain; drawn across the asphalt, vulnerable, bare-skinned, gritting teeth. Hellos gone, happiness gone, affection drowned: a split course from other beating hearts. Witnesses long turned their backs. The shadows now masters. A heavy curtain: Sees nothing. Feels nothing. Hears no exterior. A stampede of foul cognition trampling every other seed. Isolation alongside buried attempts to break free. What is left but to bathe in misery?

Human. Experiences a morsel of premature death, dark; in a restricted headspace, in a burning, aching pain-body, in a broken heart. Or all of the above – strangely united – in a stygian medley.

Human. Cannot save another. Ever. Cannot lift his curtain. Every one has his own sword enslaved in a stone.

Human – cannot save another; no claim in these lines to turn away. Grab the hand that reaches out with all your might. Regardless, grow aware of your own veil and thereby discover compassion and gratitude and life as it rips through you, piercing, penetrating in all colors. You are the residency to radiance and light. Can you, for a moment, put down the lense and look directly at life? Can you in this frame of existence absorb the song that is crawling into the shell of your ear without layering thoughts over thoughts across the symphony? Will you allow yourself to be here completely, to immerse yourself into another, ancient connection with one more human, heart to heart?… and thus be one less who suffers.