Lost in the Gloom

During this festive time, some are ignored, overlooked, unseen.

I am but a ghost. Life long ago passed by. I know no one anymore. I am invisible. I walk, but I am motionless. I am unseen, uncared for, unkept. I am hungry, but I have nothing to eat. I wait near the trash bins for scraps of spoiled food, only to be chased away for being a vagrant. I mind my own business, lost in my thoughts, and the police want to know what I’m doing. I must chuckle, as I reply, I am plotting the overthrow of the democratic republic! To wit, the police do not chuckle back.

I look at myself in the storefront windows and realize I am older today than I was yesterday. Not that that is a revelation, but instead, I am looking more haggard today than yesterday. Is it because I haven’t eaten today, or because I didn’t eat yesterday? Is it because I don’t feel the cold much as I used to? No, it’s because I am without love. All those who knew me, loved me, lie in the cold earth, just as I walk this cold earth above them. I was a sinful man, with no belief in God, no faith in anything. Perhaps I am not alive, and I am a ghost, destined to wander in this endless, dreary day that does not end. Maybe I was wrong about hell, with heat and flame. For me, it is a cold indifference that I am trapped in, an eternity of fallen ash and bitter tears

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