I watch him.

I see him, but I no longer recognize the soul that inconspicuously lurks underneath his exterior.

he seems lifeless. dead, apparently.

and his death is not the common kind, it is a death that he shamelessly carries around with him.
he does not care if people smell the stench of his death, or if they do not conceal their pity and
mourn in front of him.

how can they care when he himself does not care?

the prostituted verse of ‘the eyes being the window to one’s soul’ is what gives him away. it is bereft
of life. its shimmer, long gone. he only uses it to see, but not to perceive. he looks with it, but
his direction renders his vision inutile.

what has happened to him? why is he devoid of life? of emotions? of dreams? where has the little
boy gone? has he gone somewhere far, far away, and does he not plan to come back?

dreams, they say, are
the little shimmers of light that lead us far and away, even when it really just leads us to where our
emotions thrive in — in our hearts.

where did the faint flicker of optimism go? what happened to the dreams? to the arrogant belief that
this is how it should be? why have they bailed on him?

the detachment, i am certain, was what had cut off his link to himself.

in an instant, he was dragged forcibly away from himself. his shell, a pathetic excuse for what had once
been shiny and new. his smile, a flimsy attempt at convincing himself that the stars will soon realign
to make way for his re-emergence.

and his laughter?

his laughter is pained, and he is laboured as he wills himself to laugh each time. the chuckle does not
resonate with how his heart had degenerated into something that once throbbed. into something that is there, but it is only there for a mechanical and calculated function.

it sustains his misery, and so, through
the years, it has become his source of spite. it mocks him and yells at him: you may be alive, but you are
no longer living.

he heaved the first time. laughed it off, until he was convinced that it was a sporadic, spontaneous thing.
but subsequently and as the frequency of these episodes progressed, he was convinced that it was just being unapologetically blunt. that he was indeed hollow.

yes, he is dead. and unlike christ, he does not seek redemption nor does he want to descend back into miserable mortality. he is petrified at the prospect of futile resuscitation. he longs to be where he ought to be.

he is drawn to the silent but profound honesty of the dark, and he is convinced that the light is only for those who have yet to be broken by life.

i do not like seeing him. and i wish him a second death.