Gripping onto a narrow margin, clinging onto slivers of hope, pleading for comfort, for something, for anything to give a moment of respite

Bottling your tonics of redemption, pushing your promises of eternities

The light at the end of the tunnel, the treasure, by design, ungraspable

The cruelest trick: to manufacture the shackles with such short links

Why must I yearn for a someday?

Why must I wait for the end to begin to find a framework, a logic, to the corporeal form we find ourselves in?

The claim of our importance in a cosmic scale, beyond our molds as bags of water and electricity

The insult of the endless threat to tow the line

The concert of faith in a vengeful eye to see each day the way that we fail, the way that we pray, the way that we act, the roles that we hold

I react to the weight

I contract from the heat

I reflect on the words

I recoil from the implications

I retract from the tomes

I turn from the guides

To celebrate an unknown, to plagiarize for a settled claim in the great expanse of the rescued dusk, to surrender

Ruined halls and altars, halted bowing heads, lives wasted straining upwards

There is no beyond