I used to fear nothing,
But not in the way that I had no fears;
I used to fear the thought of nothingness,
Like the end of Lake Ladoga a cloudy winter evening,
Or sand fading into water; nothing but an empty horizon ahead at the end of a shore in Bora Bora,
I used to fear the thought of being so far from home that I am nowhere,
That where I set my foot, nothing is to follow,
Nothing ahead, nothing behind.
The feeling of being in the grey area between existing and being a part of the ceaseless haze an autumn morning,
The feeling of being, but not fully;
Feeling your breath as your lungs empty, and fill,
Feeling your heart beat as it pumps blood into your ventricles, and out,
But not being able to grasp your mind,
Not being able to grasp your feelings, your thoughts, your purpose,
As if lethargy has made its way into the core of your heart, and spread its translucent venom from the top of your head to the end of your toes,
Filling your bloodstream with an overdose of emptiness,
Emptiness in the way that it is everything, yet nothing at all.
But now, I long to sit at the end of Lake Ladoga,
I long to gaze into the infinite space between sea and sky,
I long to be so far from home that I am nowhere,
I long to feel my mind empty, but never refill,
Because there is a war inside my mind, it's so loud, it's cataclysmic,
And what wouldn't I do for the lethargy of nothingness?
What wouldn't I do to put silence to the deafening clangour of my brain?
My war is only one of millions,
And that's why, perhaps, we are all meant to realise that we were born knowing nothing,
And we shall die knowing nothing.
When the time has come, we will all see each other in the centre of nothing,
We will lock eyes, and realise that you are as clueless as the next person,
And the next person as clueless as the one next to him.
We are a coterie of beings striving to know everything,
Yet, at the very end, we will meet in Bora Bora,
No wiser than the day we were born,
And as we stare into the horizon, we realise that existence is beyond what we will ever see again,
So we close our eyes and feel the venom rush through our bodies at last,
And even though we are the opposite of that, we feel at home.
I used to fear nothingness,
But now, it is what I strive for.
And perhaps, in another time, or another life,
We will wander off together, to see the sun set for the last time,
And if you don't mind, I hope to see you at Lake Ladoga
Clueless, hopeless, and numb,
But finally, finally at peace.
