Oh, how I did not see
the errors of my ways
how I spent time and favor
on shadows standing far behind,
silent figures in my past.

I aged faster
than I learned the lessons
life was whispering into my bones.
Each bridge I burned
out of need,
out of truth,
out of something raw or real.

I’ve sat
outside of thought,
inside doubt,
on top of dreams,
beneath the weight of wondering:
why?
where?
and to what end?

Floods of questions
drown the noise inside me
as I try to make peace
with all I’ve endured,
and yet
still feel broken
by this strange, winding road
that, in the end,
I believe,
leads to nothing.

But maybe
in the nothing,
there is peace.

I wonder
how many fools will gather
at the final hour,
those who lived restrained,
humble, waiting
for the next
the next life,
the next world,
the next promise
a promise
that never existed
outside the cradle of hope
we stitched into our minds.

They knew.
They knew
we did not know
and they took this ignorance
like a gift to be stolen,
turned it into gain—
into wealth,
into leashes for the mind,
chains for the soul.

But if we knew,
if we truly knew
there was nothing after death—
no heaven,
no judgment,
no eternal eye
what then?
Would we still walk straight
and slow
and silent?
Would we still call sin
a burden?

Or would we grab each day
like fire in our hands,
burning time with purpose,
making meaning
of this one life
instead of sacrificing it
to a dream
that might be
only silence?

I do not care anymore
what’s right or wrong.
Whether something waits
or nothing looms
both are only echoes
of thought,
shaped by fear
and passed down
like lullabies
to scared children
grown old.

No one has gone
to that Netherworld
and returned
with more than riddles.

Visions, yes
but dreams are part
of the nothing, too.
Just soft stories
spun from the dark.
Dreaming
our way
into the void.

Oh, what we might have done
if we’d known the truth.
All the chances lost,
all the years stolen
by belief
by upbringing
built on fantasy,
stitched together by trembling minds
too afraid to live
today.

Afraid of the watcher.
Afraid of the sky.

But I find comfort
in this final whisper:
One day,
I will dissolve
into the nothing.
And when that happens,
the weight I carry,
these wounds,
this sorrow
will no longer
be mine to bear.

In the nothing,
I will find
my peace.
And so,
I live now
fully,
madly,
brightly
because no one,
not one soul,
knows what comes next.

And belief…
is just
another name
for the unknown.