His greatest fears were his greatest cares. A few years later, all his fears were gone and his life was never the same again. Love that was his only hope to live, faded in the life that was now birthed. And from pole to pole of his life, it was dark for two opened eyes to hope for the light that might somehow feed the hunger of the blur. Standing in the moonlight listening to the silence around him, tears, as he gazed back to whence he always lived, loved, decided to fall away from him only to feed the grave like it would be satisfied.

Weak, like lies he became. Loneliness crept in on him in secret for everyone to see. A mouth so sad, that hardly said a word, said everything that best describe the worst of a pain. Life filled with hopes and dreams, joy and drinks, was in a heap of ash. And only to watch it grow thinner and thinner in the winds that stirred the wounds inside of his heart. The laughter that he always had, he couldn’t carry anymore. And nothing could fill the emptiness that was found in him. Neither sign to heal nor time, was an error of a fake smile close to reach. Everything and all things stilled like a night. And it was only pain that kept on going on and on, like a bird without a home.

Days were clueless of what they might contain. If they still would be living when the next dawn broke, or if darkness would keep forever and kiss the candle goodbye to the grave. He wished he knew what tomorrow might have brought, but tomorrow was never a friend of time he lived in before. He always lived for a moment found in his embrace. And fed it like a baby born of a widow, to live for today, if tomorrow might be another death to grieve on. In the middle of the night while everything died, he woke up from the couch; he sat, and listened to the sound of a broken heart inside of him.

He thought time knew when, where and how to mend. But time was stuck on the wall to leap a second. I watched him, like a broken winged bird, slowly walking towards the window. He cast the curtain aside and stared at the streets in a bird’s eye. The moon and the stars were swearing life behind the weight of his tears. Quiet as they were, winds that blew were different from the nature breathed. Leaning on the panes, he wished he was living in a dream but neither did one come before.

He wondered how life could have been without the sound of loneliness tapping from wall to wall inside his cold heart, where broken hearts go when the light to guide is shunned to guide to the life next door. It was a different world to look into. And only if he could turn back the years all else would have disappeared. But years insisted to go on and on even if it meant a fall than to relent. His world turned blurry and he was never certain if he was living under the right roof or if there was another ahead.

Larger and darker it grew, to a point where he didn’t know which directions to face or if he had to stand still till the season changed and wait for the right time to heal and wash the pain away. But there was no guarantee if all would ever end. He was rejected from all sides, he felt like he didn’t belong from the day he was brought forth. He felt like he was a mistake to have known the world and everything in it. He felt the world hated his moment to live on like everyone around him. He wondered how far will he go with the pain, or if it would ever go at all.

Fine tears on a face of an old man did not cease to roll between the clefts of his wrinkles. Sweet lies was all that he wanted to hear. But there were no mouths to speak in his ears, nor his heart to deceive him in a whisper of its beat. He felt he lived in a corridor, dark and round in cycle, groping from wall to wall for a door; a way out. But all that he could reach for, was a fount from whence the stream of hurt rained out. The wounds inside his heart pumped like an ocean’s, wave after wave, from the love that was now replaced grain by grain by the grain of pain.

He watched it grow and brought lifelessness. And there was nothing he could do about it even if he tried. A short day, a very long day, he sat there alone, broken inside. His face ravaged by grieves, and drenched deep in sadness, tears like flood streaming down like madness. But his ocean face couldn’t wet a desert heart to live and own the smile once again.

Every moment was new to him; all the warmth turned too cold. And with so many questions he had on his mind, words made no sense to comprehend either a part of it. He became too scared to face another day living for something he never dreamt to be part of. A day without a smile on his face, to live in another day without hope. His life was twisted and turned and he felt like an outsider from the world and from everyone.

***