engr.albertmike

I wake, but still in dreaming. The light just sits there a dull reminder behind a blackout curtain.   Coffee tastes like a vague memory, music hums without melody. And laughter feels rehearsed, like a scene I’ve watched times, too many.   I scroll through the world as if through thick diopters and I, observing life from a distance I can’t measure.   They say joy returns. But I don’t even know what joy is. Was it a name? That this is only passing fog. But how do you wait for color when you’ve forgotten what it look like?   My smiles are echoes. My pulse, polite. It's routine and air Forgettable. I exist in grayscale a name in a list, a face in a room, a shadow pretending to be whole.   And still, I whisper to the quiet: Maybe tomorrow, the light may remember.

I lit a candle for those who are gone. I lit a candle for those who are forgotten; for the abandoned and the forsaken, for those who have never been found. A candle for whoever waits but is found too late; who waited until their last breath. A candle for those who hoped there was someone, whose pleas were never heard. A candle for the lost, and those who were made to be lost. A beacon for those who disappeared, and those who chose to disappear. A candle for the sad ones, for the grieving and sobbing, for the one unmoving by handkerchiefs and hugs. A candle for the anxious, the scared, and the numb; a flicker for those in the dark, in forced seclusion. I lit a candle for those who have given up, for the hopeless, for those who are alone, and those who feel alone in the crowd. A light for the vulnerable, for the fightless, for your cat who still thinks of you in her last moments. Set ablaze the wick, for warmth to those grown cold, frostbitten by wind...