Dear...

Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow will be different. Today was a tomorrow. But today is no different from yesterday...

And on and on it went.

Reading a friend's diary entails a risk: you witness how pathetic and loathsome they are and wonder, with utter seriousness, "why do I hang out with his moron?"

You want to hear more?

Spiraling into the recesses of my broken heart, I wonder if there was space for another. Now that she was gone, I shuffle aimlessly from moment to moment, each less vibrant than the last with her absence...

Alright, alright, that should suffice. Another truism becomes evident: that which has expired makes for an oppressive specter, dressed with sentiment and unfulfilled ideals.

One more before we move on.

I see this accursed stretch of ruinous luck has sown the seeds of my undoing. I'm slowly building up the courage. Soon, I will attain a final cold comfort in the reaper's embrace.

Heard it before. This is why one should never take a peek, no matter how strong the temptation. It spawns a self-righteous 'duty' to intervene. It leads to meddling and undue anxiety for the voyeur reader. It transforms the nature of a relationship, tears down comfortable habits, destabilizes routine, and, sometimes, ends up in an armed showdown at the local roller rink.

The Avatar

Me...and...erring through metaphorical thickets,
cruising along this doom spiral towards elegant, exalted, salvation;
this doom spiral towards queer queries:
where do we go? what's to be done?

Me...and...erring through compassionate subterfuge,
pity these inflated sentiments,
stare down Schopenhauer long enough
and existence shall collapse your skull.

Me...and...erring into emaciated arms,
redemption enters a cave,
hears a distant sonorous voice exalt,
"Here lies our Saviour,
beaten, humiliated,
purple and blue,
human through and through."

Me...and...erring through mnemonic forests,
in search of lost time,
a persistent nostalgia...
and longing for eternal validation.

Me...and...erring into the abyss, I find Him
cold and dead,
human through and through.
He speaks:

"Life most sacred is in the dirt, the air;
our shared obsolescent glances,
and blemished beauty."

"Life cannot be without blood, sinew, and flesh.
Taste my tears, are they not salty?
Feel my wounds, do they not sting you as well?
Witness my pain and know the absurdity of their ways."

"Admirers plotted my ruination,
institutionalized my desecration."

"May they burn for usurping the throne;
their presumption, their falsified faith
sow the seeds of their doom."

Me...and...erring through tomes upon tomes of desecration,
I see crimson tears stream down his cheek.

"They have forgotten you..."

"...the moment I passed."

Despondent words accompanied his melancholy,

"I'm their avatar, their clown
- my death justifies their crimes,
those morbid profiters, those disingenuous crooks,
those pious egoists."

Me...and...erring through fire and brimstone,
I see Him puttering into the distance.

"Terror strikes the heart that cannot bear to be in the presence of beauty...
But fear not, he is mere image, another avatar, a projection against a wall..."

An apparition, an illusion, spectral like an oasis -
he haunted, he soothed, and he tormented;
and then He was gone.

Me...and...erring out of the depths,
anguished cries called out to the Saviour,
hoping for redemption....
silence...deafening silence....echoed from dark eternity to His tomb,
it read:

lasciate ogni speranza

Reluctance.

Reluctance was his ethos. He reluctantly teetered on the edge for a good while and reluctantly went over the edge, against his will. In hesitation he retained a fragile image of self and hence found comfort. He reluctantly finished school, found an office job, a wife, and sired two children. He went in and out of debt, accumulated savings, paid off his home, raised the children, sent them to school, retired, and went reluctantly with his wife on an Alaskan cruise for his sixty-fifth birthday. It was there when he reluctantly succumbed to death - unsure he wanted to go on living, unsure of what laid ahead. He reluctantly struggled against his murderer - but alas, his half-measured resistance proved futile. That was roughly the life of Plato Allen, nearly sixty-five years of reluctance.