r/prose

The story rarely settles in the place we drew the map. We fall into the timing or we fall into the trap. It isn’t always malice, it isn’t always hate. Sometimes it’s the shifting of the gears of human fate. We point the jagged fingers, we cast the heavy blame, to hide the fact that neither one of us could finish out the game. The truth is in the labor, in the waking willing choice: if two souls pull together they will surely find a voice.

Sometimes the love is heavy, it’s a mountain made of lead. A soul that stalks the hallways of the waking of the dead. Sometimes the love is fragile and it simply cannot grow. Too small to beat the winter and the coming of the snow. And sometimes, in the silence, the pulse begins to fade, we wake to find only distance is the choice that we have made. We reach the fork in silence, the place where paths divide, where one must choose to mend it or take the turning wide.

The love we leave behind us does not vanish into air, it changes in the crucible, a cross we have to bear. It curdles into memory or softens into grace, it settles in the quiet, tucked away into the space. It’s a duel edged engine, a force that acts to teach, to pull us towards wisdom that was always out of reach. Standing in the wreckage a choice held in your palm, to let the past destroy your future or find a different calm.

Even those who cannot see can see just as well as those who can. Death can come any time and bring that kind of silence that is loud. Everyone can deny the existence of what the eye cannot see, but death will always, and always be—just here, and just right there.

In the forest thats where true freedom resides. A person can disappear and yet stand out against the greens and the browns. I often wonder who I would be without these moments of peace and solitude. If I had never found respite from the weight of society and its made up expectations. A less patient man.

I fall asleep under the stars dreaming of a day where the lack of money in my pocket didnt represent who I was. When my character and how hard I try meant something. Where my lack of hate and constant choice of kindness in the face of violence and deception was appreciated.

Yet in the forest I learn more about me and less about the trivial things. I awaken the barest instinct and push my thoughts out into the air without worry of judgment or fear of embarrassment. I find my raw self and let him be without restraint.

If I scream into the forest and and no one is around to hear it, would it make a sound?

Some people have mastered the art of hyper independence. They ask for very little from others. Not because they are trying to be humble or selfless, but because they do not know any other way to exist. Experience has taught them that asking costs, in one shape or another.

They become the reliable ones, the thoughtful ones, the people who remember birthdays, check in after funerals, ask if they can help clean up. Consistently. So quietly that you only notice when they stop giving. People call them sweet and kind until one day they crumple under the weight of their own invention.

What often goes unnoticed is how much of that kindness was forged in deprivation. Affection, perhaps, once arrived unpredictably or took shapes that demanded more from them than they could offer. They learned to stretch it for as long as they could. They learned to expect little. They learned not to perpetuate the disappointment.

A delayed reply becomes proof that someone was thinking of them after all. Far better than those who never reached back. A compliment lasts for months, looping through their mind. A gift feels like something only they owe you instead of a normal part of friendship.

They become a scavenger of evidence, a collector of scraps.

They do not have a few reliable relationships. They have many close ones and yet, when they close their eyes and think of who they would call when everything falls apart, the answer returns void.

They get called needy consistently, as if it sticks out like a collarbone on their body. And yet, needs are exactly what they have struggled to have met. Anytime, they went against their own grain, and asked anyway, it has been met with anger, and worse even, with indifference.

They have spent years making meals out of crumbs so much so that you might still be mistaken that they must really love crumbs.

The habit follows them into their adulthood.
They are grateful for things others consider given. Some people notice their low-maintenance nature and even praise them for it without realizing it was built from adaptation. They become easy to love because so little is required. They become easy to overlook for the same reason too.

The cruel part is that eventually the scarcity is gone, but the foraging remains.
Someone offers a feast and they still search the floor for crumbs like your favorite dog. They still feel compelled to earn what is already being given.

And the saddest part is that they are the ones perpetuating the cycle.

They could choose differently. They could stop accepting what leaves them hungry. They could walk toward abundance instead of rationing affection. But the body remembers old economies long after the famine ends.

-Existential

The Museum Guide

I used to think loving something meant standing in front of it for a very long time.

Which is probably why I spent years staring at paintings without ever reading the little plaques beside them.

The plaque is always there.

A few inches away.

Patient.

Quiet.

Explaining things the paint never could.

The year.

The artist.

The reason a patch of blue exists where blue has no business being.

Yet somehow I always skipped it.

I would stand there admiring the work and walk away believing admiration was the same thing as understanding.

It isn't.

Not even close.

A person can spend hours beneath a night sky and still know nothing about the stars.

A person can memorize a face and never learn its history.

A person can call something beautiful without ever discovering why it became beautiful in the first place.

Lately I've been wondering how many things I've mistaken looking for seeing.

How many times I've stood in front of something extraordinary and left knowing only the outline.

Sometimes I think about museums after they close.

The paintings remain exactly where they are.

Silent.

Unmoving.

Waiting.

Not for attention.

For curiosity.

And I think that's the difference.

Attention looks.

Curiosity stays.

One counts the brushstrokes.

The other asks why they were painted.

I don't know.

Maybe I've spent too much of my life believing that showing up was the same thing as understanding.

Maybe I've confused presence with observation.

Maybe some of the most important things in the world have been quietly waiting for me to ask one more question.

The plaque was never hidden.

I just thought the painting was enough.

A perfect man
If we can truly call him that, a man
A man who smiles to everyone
Who despises and lies to no one
A strong man, a cold man
Cut off from the world he knew and loved
A nonchalant man, an aura farmer
That’s what we call perfect
That’s what we say is worth of our respect
But he must sacrifice a part of himself
To promote that image
He must hide all his feelings within
All his love, all his hate, all his joy and rage
Is he truly perfect
Or is he just a mindless slave to today’s society
A perfect family
Dinners by the table, family vacations, loads of smiley pictures
That’s what we call the perfect family
But in their perfection, there are cracks and brokenness
In their image, I see loopholes
The father and mother cheat but are smart about it
The children are utter messes
The only true one is the dog for he knows nothing
A mind so innocent pure and true
His ignorance makes him truly happy
A perfect world
Everyone’s happy and there’s truly peace on Earth
A utopia, paradise heaven on this blue patch of dirt
There’s no discrimination, no hunger, we all live and nobody dies
But Kendrick said it best
“A perfect world is never perfect, only filled with lies”
There is no “no discrimination”, just new discrimination
There are no batons or water hoses
Just men with suits signing our deaths
It is not that there is no hunger, we’re just too blind to see it
It’s not that there is no suffering we are not programmed to feel it
We are slaves to our our desire for a perfect world
We don’t see that it’s worse than the world we live in now
Stop chasing perfection, to do so is futile
For only the Lord can make a perfect world worthwhile
As such
Embrace the imperfection for there is beauty in it
Accept the flaws for at least they are honest
To chase perfection is like a dog chasing its own tail
For to catch it, he must pay a price of heavy pain