What is the void?
Nothingness manifested?
There can’t really be such a thing…
How can there be nothing?

It’s impossible.

You can’t fault me for having trouble wrapping my head around an idea as intricate and deeply infinite as nothing. From a young age, we’re taught that everything, even empty space, is created from protons, neutrons,  subatomic particles…

Empty space is always made from something else.

Some describe the void not as a place, but instead as spiritual enlightenment and/or liberation. As detachment from everything. Some describe entering the void as the moment one realizes that if you try too hard to understand then you will miss the point; as the moment where the student realizes that he will never be able to anticipate his masters surprise attack, so, instead of being anxious he accepts his inability to know; as the understanding that holding on is suffering and letting go is freedom.

There is no way to truly talk about the void, about emptiness, because there is nothing tangible to be expressed in words. And yet, our curious human minds are so fixated on using dialogue to try and articulate this commodity.

Words will always fail.

Even if we could wrap our heads around this idea of emptiness, this complete and total lack of anything (comfort, love, hate, despair, joy, happiness, agony(all pieces of this complicated fabric known as human existence)) we would descend into the deepest and darkest of melancholies. The sudden moment of realization that non-being and being are one and the same and that the only thing separating the two is the awareness of being aware and the unawareness of being unaware would be too much to endure. The weight of realizing that nothing is everything, that we are 0 (placeholders for nothing (the extinction of our species before a return to nature untainted imminent)) would prove to be the strongest link of all in these shackles of existence.

What is the void?

Maybe it’s best not to ponder this any further.

It's all too much.

I don't know how to say it better
than saying it like that, because -

How do I wrap all the ends
of the universe
into a napkin
and pass it over to you
without spilling something?

How do I scoop the depths
of humanity's depravity
into an ice-cream
that won't melt
down the sides
or crack from the pressure?

How do I tell you
how terribly awful
it must be
to have to argue
with people
about whether
mutilating the genitals
of 5-8 year old children
is right or wrong?

How do I tell you
about the terror that seizes you
when you talk to someone you love
who honestly believes
that pigmentation,
geographical location,
religious affiliation,
****** orientation,
are reasons
to be killed,
beaten,
detained,
condemned?

How do I describe that
sickening feeling
that I feel
when I'm going about
my coffee-cup flavored,
pill-prescribed diet,
acting like the day is normal,
when I know:
people are being bombed,
sleeping on the streets,
set on fire,
beheaded,
******,
dying,
for doing
or being
the same things
I am going to do and be today
right after I finish my latte?

How do I live with that
knowledge
that girls are kidnapped
for going to school;
that four-year-olds
are holding assault rifles
when they should be
holding dolls;
that five-year-olds
are being trained as soldiers
when they should be
playing with toy soldiers;
that children
are giving birth to children;
that every 9 seconds
in the United States,
a woman is beaten
or *****;
that I have an iPhone
that can do a billion things
and there are
food riots in India,
that -

That I could keep writing
until my fingers were whittled
down to bone
and I wouldn't finish
that list?

How do I describe that,
all of that,
except by saying,

it's all too much?

When I will be on my death bed,
Lying on the white sheets,
In the cold rooms, with machines
that would keep me alive, and
my wife and children would leave
the room as the time go by, as
the visit hours will end, and
they wish me bye bye,
My eyes will swell, thinking
that it might be the last day,
I am alive, Where,
the last thing I will recall,
is, how you kissed me,
Under the trees, with
your hands around my neck,
with an affection unwilled to end,
and the eyes stared to say,
that you loved me, but never
the lips said, for a fear
to hurt me of unexpected faith,
as I will regret every moments,
for the luck that I prevailed,
And perish my life,
with unfulfilled but pure,
A love, that I wish to get
next life, A new ship to be sailed.....

I grew up weird.
Both fast, and painfully slow.
I understood everything and nothing.
Socially, I started confident and grew awkwardly
first in the sun, then bending away from such bright attentions. Academically I started out running, always ahead,
always the best, the brightest. Straight As and
mismatched clothes, socially lost
yet somehow showing
'great potential'.

Now I've learned a lot.
All blacks and grays, I've finally
mastered at least a portion of my shortcomings
but its too late. Because I've grown up and its shifted again
analytically I see it, can emulate it, but it isn't
familiar or comfortable, it took me
years to catch up and I'm
still behind.

I've grown up weird.

Is this obsession?
Possession that I feel
Or simply the oxygen burn of my fire for you.
Is this how I am destined to see you?
Through eyes disturbed by my own historic fears
When I envisage better fingers upon your skin
A satisfaction I fear I could never achieve.
Is this defence?
My worry that soon I shall be the mundane
That makes you seek the excitement of another’s mystery.

Jealousy does not come from distrust
For I have never doubted the integrity of who you are
I am jealous of actions, not people
The looks, the contact
Elongated conversations
The freedom to be able to say yes
Inhabiting the same space
To share an embrace

I imagine the world looks upon you as I do
With desire and uncontrolled emotion
Where I am the least deserved suitor
And everyone else has more to offer than I
I fear the imagination in my mind
And how it can hurt me more than you
When I shall shrink until you no longer see me
Under the weight of my own self-deprecation;
Eventually leading you into someone else's arms who remind you of who I once was before I became no one

Yet the truth remains
That it is only without you that I am no one.