He lives forever,
but daylight keeps him inside.
He learns a city by its night sounds:
the hour laughter becomes sirens,
the streets that smell like bread,
the ones that smell like grief.
He watches everyone die.
Even the ones he never loved.
He hates how fast that becomes normal.
At first, eternity feels like a gift,
a simple equation:
time plus discipline equals mastery.
He reads every book,
until they begin to echo.
He learns language, music, history,
until he can predict the cycle
the way you feel a headache coming.
Then the worst lesson:
knowledge is not purpose.
It is only a larger room
to feel empty in.
He gets rich because he can.
Compound interest believes in him
without asking why.
Money buys ease, silence, locked doors,
the luxury of vanishing.
It does not buy a reason.
Maybe that is the vampire fantasy:
life without an ending,
wealth without a cost.
But the stories skip the middle,
the long middle,
where the miracle becomes a job.
What is his purpose
when he cannot end?
He leaves no child behind,
no future with his eyes,
no orchard he will not see harvested.
No aging into forgiveness.
Just the ongoing.
And the feeding.
He drinks blood to continue.
A neat sentence.
A horrible truth.
He makes rules
the way drowning people pray.
Only the cruel.
Only the willing.
Only enough.
Only never again.
But hunger is not an ethic.
Hunger is a law.
It does not care who is good.
It does not care who is trying.
It does not care if he loved them,
if he whispers sorry into their throat
like sorry could be mercy.
He tells himself it is not ******
They would have died anyway,
by fever, car, war,
by the ordinary sabotage of being human.
But I know what I take.
Not just blood,
but mornings.
Not just a pulse,
but the small futures
stacked inside it.
I live long enough
that guilt becomes furniture.
I stop seeing it.
I keep bruising myself anyway.
Loneliness becomes a climate,
a permanent weather.
Friends are seasons.
Lovers are sparks.
Cities change their faces.
Even the moon looks altered
after a century
of seeing it through hunger.
Eventually I forget names.
Not from cruelty.
Because carrying everyone
is another way to die.
So I guard my heart like a museum:
no touching,
move along.
I envy small endings.
A kid crying over a lost balloon,
because it left,
and everything leaves.
I envy human urgency.
I envy the clean shape of a life
that knows it will be finished.
I have time.
All of it.
And it hollows me
patiently, without malice.
I begin to understand
immortality is not the horror.
The horror is being unneeded.
Unending, unessential.
Some nights I watch dawn
soften the world from behind glass
and feel a grief so pure
it almost seems holy.
Not because I cannot go out there.
Because the day arrives
without me.
Because it is meant
for someone else.
And I think:
what would I give
to give life instead of taking it?
To trade eternity
for one true, exhausted sleep?
To put my mouth down.
To set the hunger beside me
like a weapon I am done carrying.
To close my eyes
and know the world will go on,
and for once
to feel relief,
not exile.
Dec 14, 2025
Dec 14, 2025 at 6:19 PM UTC
He lives forever,
but daylight keeps him inside.
He learns a city by its night sounds:
the hour laughter becomes sirens,
the streets that smell like bread,
the ones that smell like grief.
He watches everyone die.
Even the ones he never loved.
He hates how fast that becomes normal.
At first, eternity feels like a gift,
a simple equation:
time plus discipline equals mastery.
He reads every book,
until they begin to echo.
He learns language, music, history,
until he can predict the cycle
the way you feel a headache coming.
Then the worst lesson:
knowledge is not purpose.
It is only a larger room
to feel empty in.
He gets rich because he can.
Compound interest believes in him
without asking why.
Money buys ease, silence, locked doors,
the luxury of vanishing.
It does not buy a reason.
Maybe that is the vampire fantasy:
life without an ending,
wealth without a cost.
But the stories skip the middle,
the long middle,
where the miracle becomes a job.
What is his purpose
when he cannot end?
He leaves no child behind,
no future with his eyes,
no orchard he will not see harvested.
No aging into forgiveness.
Just the ongoing.
And the feeding.
He drinks blood to continue.
A neat sentence.
A horrible truth.
He makes rules
the way drowning people pray.
Only the cruel.
Only the willing.
Only enough.
Only never again.
But hunger is not an ethic.
Hunger is a law.
It does not care who is good.
It does not care who is trying.
It does not care if he loved them,
if he whispers sorry into their throat
like sorry could be mercy.
He tells himself it is not ******
They would have died anyway,
by fever, car, war,
by the ordinary sabotage of being human.
But I know what I take.
Not just blood,
but mornings.
Not just a pulse,
but the small futures
stacked inside it.
I live long enough
that guilt becomes furniture.
I stop seeing it.
I keep bruising myself anyway.
Loneliness becomes a climate,
a permanent weather.
Friends are seasons.
Lovers are sparks.
Cities change their faces.
Even the moon looks altered
after a century
of seeing it through hunger.
Eventually I forget names.
Not from cruelty.
Because carrying everyone
is another way to die.
So I guard my heart like a museum:
no touching,
move along.
I envy small endings.
A kid crying over a lost balloon,
because it left,
and everything leaves.
I envy human urgency.
I envy the clean shape of a life
that knows it will be finished.
I have time.
All of it.
And it hollows me
patiently, without malice.
I begin to understand
immortality is not the horror.
The horror is being unneeded.
Unending, unessential.
Some nights I watch dawn
soften the world from behind glass
and feel a grief so pure
it almost seems holy.
Not because I cannot go out there.
Because the day arrives
without me.
Because it is meant
for someone else.
And I think:
what would I give
to give life instead of taking it?
To trade eternity
for one true, exhausted sleep?
To put my mouth down.
To set the hunger beside me
like a weapon I am done carrying.
To close my eyes
and know the world will go on,
and for once
to feel relief,
not exile.
I've been reading Anne Rice. So... :) This is not a vampire power fantasy. It is the long middle: the boredom, the hunger, the rules you make to survive, and the guilt that turns into furniture. A poem about wanting an ending, and envying human urgency.
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