Oh, the moon, don't you give up.
Oh, the clouds, let him be seen.
Oh, the stars, don't leave your friend.
He's the weakest he has ever been.
We're all born, we all live, some more than the others, before we all die. And we're all born for a purpose, and we often live our life to fulfil it, though often after spending most to only realise what it really is. I believe that I, for instance, was born to fight darkness, and to bring warmth, and to bring to sight what is hidden, whatever is shy enough to not be seen, like those little cracks on the damp walls of the room I am in, like the shine the pitch black inkpot, lying on the table on which I myself am kept, hides within, or like shadows, and in a way, darkness itself.
The night seemed to have arrived earlier than usual. It was the longest night I had ever had to live through. Wind blew like it was the last time that it could. The leaves on the tree that could be seen from the window shivered in the cold. The sky was painted with a million twinkling stars, but none seemed to light up the room we were in. So, the thin man had lit me up, and when he did, the bits of his bare skin shone through his torn clothes.
I remember the first time I saw him, just as thin, nowhere near as weak. There were no scars. I remember when he first brought me in here. "Hey," he had just answered a call, and I still remember how bright his face was while he was on that call. "Really? You liked it? Oh, thank you so much!" The wooden floor was littered with crumpled pieces of paper, the blue walls covered with broken titles, incomplete, yet satisfying. It felt like someone had just brought me into the sky, and words, like stars, were sprinkled all over, and I remember me wondering if there was or ever will be something for me to light up here. "Yes," he had chuckled, "I will keep on writing until my last breath."
He coughed, and then picked up his quill, which I felt, was in a deep slumber, for when he tried to write, he couldn't. Every time he began to bring it closer to the half torn, like himself, piece of parchment on the table, he stopped just before it could touch it, and then sighed in pain. His hands and his lips were quivering, yet his face was sweating little pieces of glistening ice. I could see no wounds on his body, but a certain pain was evident. The shabby curtains on the window screamed for the poor man, trying to touch him, to console him, to embrace him, and I kept wishing they succeed.
I remember the first time I saw him write. I remember him being so passionate, his eyes always shimmering with rhymes, his quill always ready to deliver its best. His words leaked pride as they were born, his quill painted wonders as it used to kiss a paper, and his eyes seemed to almost never blink when he would witness his own self form universes within universes of poetry. And I remember myself freezing with awe, and wondering if what I let out was even true light, for the shine in him far overwhelmed mine.
"This is not what you're meant to do, son!" his father had once said.
"Shouldn't I be the one to decide that? I write good, papa."
"I know you do. But writing's going to lead you nowhere! There'll be no bread. There'll be no one to hold you. You'll keep trying and no one will even know who you are!"
"Paa, just let me do what I want to, and I'm sure things will change. I will not give up until I get what I deserve. I promise. People will read. I know they will. If I just keep writing with the best of me, they will."
"There's only darkness at its end, son, try to understand!"
The echoes of those words never seemed to have left the room. "Darkness at its end." I could still hear it, and I think, he could hear it too. I could feel it, the end was near, almost like it had already entered the room, and I think, he could feel it too. And then, as a little drop of tear fell from his eyes, he tried to write again. Only this time, it seemed like he pulled out his soul for one last time and put all his strength to writing the one final piece; only this time, the quill worked.
"I don't want to die before getting read," he had once cried on the shoulder of his friend in this very room. "I've tried everything. Everything! And no one even knows that I've written anything. It's okay if people don't like it, but no one is even reading it. No one even knows it exists. No one even knows I exist. I don't want to die a nobody. I don't want to die without people knowing who, or if even, I was." And looking at his tears that day, I realised, that light can't ever be enough; darkness, like a sly thief, the truth in moments of lies, always finds ways to creep in. And I realised, that some darkness can't be fought, at least with the false light which I tried to light up his life with.
As I tried to read what he wrote, my light fighting the wind, I realised that his words were hurt, the rhyme was ill, and the poetry, unlike its elders that used to stuff in pride, was hollow. I could feel my bits starting to roll down my face. The words weren't those of ambition with which the quill had spent its youth writing. They were broken; tired of trying to no avail, almost begging, begging for someone to read them, if not out of respect, then out of pity.
His coughing became more frequent. The trembling of his hands was more vigorous. The pain in his sighs was more agonizing. And just when the shrieks of wind, the blowing of curtains, the roar of the rumbling leaves, the light from my fighting-to-stay-alive flame, and everything else together gave birth to a moment more horrid than hell, with a loud thud, he fell on the table, on his last piece of writing, on his last attempt of what he thought he was meant to do. A powerful gust of wind entered the room and the curtains finally reached the writer, and I was smothered. The room was dark again. His last few breaths, like muffled whispers, stayed in the room for a long time. It was the longest night I had ever lived through, and the shortest of the ones I have since spent.
I lived with his corpse for the next few days before he was discovered by the garbage-man. The room has been empty ever since. I wish I could say elseways, but his last poetry was not even near his best works, but rather, a deeply flawed one. We are never scared to shine, no one is. All we are scared of is to shine and not get acknowledged. I wish I could say otherwise, but the man who left that night was a silhouette of the man who brought me here. That man had died long ago, killed by failures, failures he could never explain. He was killed by the scars he received every time his poetry went unread, every time his words went unheard, and every time his shine went unnoticed.
We all are born, we all live, and we all die. And we all are born for a purpose. But not all find success; some fail, like me, like him. I don't know where his works are now, and I hope they're being read, recognized, appreciated, but to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised to know that they went with him, like him, left leaving no prints behind. It feels like the air that the thin man breathed out still wanders in this room, still waiting to be felt, like his screams that still hide beneath the silence, waiting to be heard. The sky is now devoid of the stars, and all I know is that the shadows of the stars still live in the room, hidden, shy of being seen, ashamed I think, waiting for someone to light me up again.
Oh, fellow eyes, look at him.
Listen, listen; the moon shouts.
Savour every bit of the moonlight,
Before the sun comes out.
