“I’ll live another day”, I tell myself.

But it’s a life without emotion, entire days passing with neither joy nor sorrow. Dust encroaching outside the doorframe of an empty, dead room. Is that life? Not really. That must mean it’s a lie. To say “I’ll live another day”… that must be a lie. It can’t be though. My voice has been smothered into silence by the cries of adulthood, drowned by the tears of expectations, choked by the hands of perfection. But I still have hope, just barely. My heart still beats passively and steadily, fueled by childish cognition: this foolish flicker of hope within me. I can hardly feel its warmth, except for the timid body heat emanating from my skin, a mimicry of what it means to be alive. So it’s not a lie, not completely. But I don’t think it’s truth either. Rather, it’s a guess. A wish. A wish beheld under the gaze of death by the palms of life. A dream of lost words, or wilting leaves under a dim night. A lonely star floating somewhere in the great expanse of between.