The Forgotten Soul
I stand here, or perhaps I don’t stand at all.
Is this standing? Is this life?
Or am I merely waiting,
a ghost in my own skin,
a man who was but no longer *is*?
No, I cannot remember —
but even if I could, would it matter?
Would it change the burden I carry?
Once, I thought I was something,
someone of purpose,
someone of action —
but now I see, clearly, I was only a fool.
Fools are born from hope.
And I —
I have no hope.
Not anymore.
I had a name,
yes, I think I did.
It must have meant something.
But now that name,
it clings to me like a lie,
a falsehood I cannot untangle from the truth.
It is the name of a man who betrayed himself,
the name of a man who dared to dream
but never could escape the torment of his own mind.
What was I trying to be?
A good man?
A man of ideals?
Ah, but there is no goodness left in me,
if there ever was any at all.
I tried to climb,
I tried to rise —
but what good is striving when the earth beneath you gives way?
I tumbled. I fell.
No, I plunged into the abyss,
and now I am at the bottom,
groping through the dark,
blind to everything except the cold fact
that I am lost.
The mirror —
I look, and I see a man,
but who is he?
He is not me.
He wears my face, yes,
but it is not my face,
it is a mask,
a mask for the beast that lurks beneath.
Do you see him?
The hollowed man.
The one who hid from the world,
who buried his soul under layers of deceit,
layers of regret.
A beast in a man’s skin —
that is who I have become.
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The world, it moves on without me.
I feel it passing by,
indifferent to my plight,
indifferent to my suffering.
I once believed in something greater,
in truth, in justice —
but now I see the world is a farce.
The truth is bitter,
and justice… justice is a joke.
We are all clowns in the grand circus of existence,
each one wearing his own painted face,
each one pretending,
hoping,
dying in slow, quiet agony.
I am no longer a man.
I am a shadow,
an echo of what might have been,
what I once thought I was.
But that memory, too, fades,
like a dream upon waking.
I have forgotten myself.
I have forgotten my purpose.
I have forgotten what it means to be alive.
And so, I drift,
silent, hollow,
waiting for the end —
for the mercy that will never come.
For how can there be mercy
in a world where men are left to rot in their own despair?
No, mercy is for the weak,
and I,
I have become something beyond weakness.
