Contemplating the End.

I am a fellow Telescope,
I have been mediocre all my life,
but today, I believe
I am more than just mediocre.
While every other inanimate object
in and around this premise
has observed "Mum's the word";
I decided to speak about this.
My master has always resorted to me,
taken shelter in me,
every time he hit low
or wanted to communicate with the stars
in the brightly lit sky,
which was perhaps the converse
of his state of mind; gloomy, melancholy.
I was right there,
all the while,
contributed my bit
by mediating between him and the vast space.

Often I enabled him to locate
the minutest of the satellites up there;
however, I regret deeply
that I was unable to
recognize the most enormous of his
sorrows in there.

I have known him since
five years now
and I can vouch with conviction that
he was not a coward;
maybe this was all he could've done
to end his miseries.
He never came clean to me
about his struggle with mental health,
which is not an excuse valid enough
to spare me scot-free.

Somewhere I have underperformed,
somewhere the community he dwelled in has failed,
somewhere his reserved nature has played hostile;
or for that matter, any other reason.
He has left all of us,
with the niche empty
which he occupied in our hearts.
That one corner,
oh so secure,
in one of the four chambers
of all the hearts he had touched,
will forever has his name
engraved in bold letters,
just like on the grave in the cemetery.

The quietude
following a sad demise
is quieter than the resonance
of a shooting star.

"Why did he have to end it this way?"
I overheard when
I eavesdropped on the conversations
muzzled and muffled.
Upon reiterating the same question overnight,
I came up with
a reasonable counterargument
that, in the moment,
nothing must have felt more right
than putting an end
to his torment
by asphyxiating his breath.
Probably, anything could've appeared better
than gasping
a figuratively claustrophobic breath
every alternate moment of inhalation.

Endings are of different fabrics,
some beautiful and some difficult.
What may be pleasant for one
might be the opposite for another.
Let's all pledge to hear others out,
without any lens of judgement
and replace it with just one sentiment
of unconditional compassion,
better known as 'Empathy'.