As humans, we are not made to understand this kind of beauty
that nature created.
And yet, without even trying,
I can see it in every part of your being.

I do not understand.
How can your beauty differ so much from the usual meaning of the word,
and yet be more surprising than any other kind known to man?

It is not a beauty that demands attention,
but one that simply exists —
and still, I find myself unable to look away.

It is the beauty of nature, as I have said before:
not false or ornamental,
nor grotesque or forced together.

I can’t help but compare it to a landscape.
No one is forced to look,
yet countless poems and books are written about it.
We are fascinated —
because it is natural, primordial.
A beauty we could never create,
and never truly possess.

I see it now — in your eyes, your lips,
the tilt of your head when you smile.
Like a view from the mountaintop,
looking down at the quiet forest,
or the sun sinking into the sea,
only to rise once more in the morning.

Your beauty belongs in the poems of the old Greeks.
How can someone be this beautiful,
and in such a simple way?

I may never understand.
But as I lie here a few feet away from you,
with the comforting knowledge that you do not even know my name,
I can’t help but smile,
and stay a little longer
to contemplate your beauty.

I was suddenly struck with the idea that I didn’t feel anything. A certain loneliness had washed over me, and I could not talk, walk, speak, or even move of my own free will. Everything was now alarmingly still, and I could do nothing to escape it. Even the thoughts that crossed my mind were so painful to bear that I found myself trying to block them out.

Being in complete detachment from my own body, my old needs and desires seemed foolish and depraved. I did not want to see or have anything to do with the old things that brought me joy, for I could not understand, in this moment, what joy meant.

I found myself completely numb, and with that thought came another, even more surprising: that I had to stay in this unbearable situation. More torturous would have been to try to escape this weird state of mind than to actually experience it.
And I began to wonder: if I were to perish in this very instant, would I suffer — or, in the strange stillness of this numbness, would I even recognize the weight of feeling anything at all?