The Open Middle

Today, I long for what I lost yesterday.

Yesterday, I was longing for today.

And today, I miss yesterday.

The threads of my future are tangled.

The threads of the present cannot be woven.

And the threads of the past—

a past that was not very kind—

break apart carelessly

and move backward.

They do not care.

They sharpen themselves

and sink into my heart.

Nothing is the way it should be.

I live my days hoping for a better tomorrow,

but that better tomorrow will not come.

I was, I am, and I will stay

in the mud of misery.

Happiness is only an ideal for me,

an ideal that will never come true.

Sleep is forbidden to me.

I find no peace in sleep,

and no peace when I am awake.

I am not in my past,

not in my present,

and not in my future.

There is no hope.

It will never get better.

I envy the dead.

They are done with themselves.

They are calm. They are at rest.

A dead body without life is a lucky dead.

But pity the dead who are still alive.

They do not know what to choose—

their life or their death.

When they try to rest,

they worry about moving forward.

When they try to live,

they wish for death.

They do not understand the living,

and they do not belong to the dead.

They are stuck in between.

Every cell of my body is out of harmony.

Each one plays a different sound.

There has never been, anywhere,

an open embrace for someone who stands in the middle.

I am that open middle of this world.

The threads of my life

never reached an end.

Nothing was ever made from them.

Each time they came together,

they felt a little hope and continued.

Then disagreement grew between them,

they became anxious and confused,

twisting again and again

until they turned into tight knots—

knots no hand could untie.

They were destroyed before they could begin.

From life, I ask for death.

Is that too much to ask?

Why does life give death

to those who want to live,

and give life

to those who want to die?

That is why the world is divided.

Some run from death,

and others run from life.

Some are alive in death,

and some are dead in life.

Whatever tune life plays,

I understand it well.

They say life is given only once.

Is death not the same?

Death also comes only once.

But life is the continuation of endless suffering,

and death is the end of it.

Neither the dead understand me,

nor the living.