There was once a man who understood the world
as if it had whispered its secrets to him in the cradle.
Numbers bent beneath his fingertips,
equations sang where others only heard silence.
A gift, they said. A mind of fire, a blessed thing.
And so he worked, because what else does a man do
when the stars have lodged themselves in his skull?

He walked among them,
the ones with fractured voices, with trembling hands.
He was kind, as though kindness was instinct,
as though, if he gave enough,
the echo of warmth might return to him,
filling the space inside his ribs
where something—something—should have been.

But the years passed,
and nothing came back.

He watched them love, weep, ache, yearn.
He watched their faces crumple with sorrow,
their lips part with laughter.
He listened to the hush of breath between lovers,
the trembling exhale of grief.
He saw it all. Knew it all.
And felt nothing.

There were days he thought—perhaps—
if he held their hands long enough,
if he stood in the sun a little longer,
if he worked harder,
if he buried himself in something greater—
it would come.
The feeling.
The thing they all had.

And so he worked.
And worked.
Until his name was etched into books,
until his mind had shaped the world,
until they called him a genius,
until they called him irreplaceable.

And yet, no one ever called him home.
Nor did ask him to be his home.

He was a man of stone, carved for others,
for purpose, for brilliance, for the world.
But never for himself.
Never for love.
Never for anything that would make him whole.

They celebrated him from a distance.
They praised his name in rooms he would never enter.
They quoted his words but never spoke to him.
And when he lay in bed at night,
staring at the ceiling,
listening to his own breath echo off the empty walls,
he knew.
It would always be like this.

Time unraveled.
His hands trembled now when he held a pen.
His voice, once steady, grew thin,
as though it were fraying at the edges,
as though it, too, was disappearing.
And one day, he could not stand.

The world did not stop for him.
No one knocked at his door.
No one sent letters asking where he had gone.

The cold settled in his limbs first,
then in his chest,
then in his throat.
And as his body curled in on itself,
something strange happened.

A single tear slipped down his cheek.

For the first time in his life, he cried.
Not from grief, nor fear, nor joy.
Just the quiet weight of knowing—
finally, and without doubt—
that he had always been alone.

By morning, the tear had dried.
No one found him for days.
And when they did,
they spoke only of his brilliance.
They carved his name into marble,
listed his work,
his discoveries,
his genius.

But not one word about the man himself.

Not one word about the man who hoped.