For five days and nights,

this ceiling confidentially confined this coffin in my room.

For five days and nights,

I had to adjust to this dull frequency.

Each morning,

when my eyes finally

peeled open,

my body would just lay cold and still.

As my soul had departed,

in search for the question that constantly rang through my head

“Why me?”.

 

In the light,

the brightness confused me.

Everything was present and clear.

Everything seemed constant.

Why couldn’t anyone see through this nonsense.

Why couldn't one admit,

that after the short span of day,

gracefully follows,

the rightful consummation of the darkness.

 

 

Then when the darkness creeps,

and the light

understanding the natural law of this world,

willingly submits.

the people,

hide.

Scurrying into

the warmth of their homes.

Secured by the presence of others.

Believing lovers will stay lovers.

Believing that everyone will be home tomorrow.

 

 

But when your 12 year old daughter,

has yet to come home,

and the sun falls, leaving traces of radiance it once shun,

you, yet sinfully grasp onto it.

You know something is wrong,

yet the voices in your head tell you otherwise:

they assure you,

“everything is alright,

John, just breath.”

And as you pace back and forth,

your heart beat races,

as you feel the pulse rushing through your nerves,

on the tip of fingernails

then throbbing contractions on your temple.

The phone has been ringing for a while.

You finally build courage to pick up.

Only to collapse

before ending the call.

 

Yet,

John was consoled.

For John had found beauty in the neglected.

John did not need a divine force,

to influence, to bestow,

to raise him to see the light once again.

Through contemplation,

he was revealed to his own book of revelation.

He did not search for the word of God,

It wasn’t necessary,

If God had created us in His mage,

then all we had to do is to search within:

to the pure,

to the untroubled,

to the bliss.

A state without suffering,

only realized through suffering,

The Buddha Nature.

 

Like John,

I had been a victim to ignorance.

I confused optimism,

with greed.

Hope

with miracles.

Confidence

with pride.

So when she was taken away from me,

temporarily

but at the moment

feeling eternally, I'd be broken.

 

But like John,

the darkness comforted me.

For the lack of sight,

made me recognize, this stranger

in this empty room,

I soon learned to be called

Self.

 

Only through the darkness,

I was able to understand:

the bleakest of night,

and the thickest of clouds,

will always succumb,

to a single ray

of light.