The Disease

All of the lights have gone out: The lights in their eyes, their smile, their touch, every flicker of passion, spark of integrity, the entire luminescence of their being, all of them- extinguished at once.

They have become transparent, slowly dissolving in their own existence- an apparition of what they once were. What had shown so brightly, each had faded until all that was left is a lonely heart beating in space. A heart like all the rest- powerful, awesome, grotesque. But still a heart alone, a heart with no body to act through, no mind to think through, no awareness to love through, and no soul to affirm its value. A heart waning of meaning, and full of madness. Comparable not even to nothing, but the predecessor of all of human error.

It was no external plague- though a vast disease, terrible and contagious.
What was once a healthy doubt, had become a paralyzing anguish.
The manifestation of despair- The fatal sickness of the mind, heart, and spirit.
Large in themselves, they were small in the world-
they became sick, disembodied.
Hope had dispossessed them.

The sublime nature of the world; the beauty, the horror-
faded away into the abstract.
Fascination and awe, absolved into nothingness.

A waking sleep, a surreal dream, a romanticized premature death.
Lost in their own isolation,
the fruits of life became bitter, tasteless.
Refusing to see they became unseen.
Refusing to hear they became unheard.
Trapped forever in their loneliness-
as a memory, a phantom, a ghost.

This was the real fear-
Being beyond definition, being beyond terms.
The final fortress of solutide.
A self inflicted exile,
Confined forever in their freedom-

The eternal surrender.