gripping onto a narrow margin, clinging onto slivers of hope, pleading for comfort, for something, for anything to give a moment of respite. bottling your tonics of redemption, pushing your promises of eternities. the light at the end of the tunnel, the treasure, by design, ungraspable. the cruelest trick: to manufacture the shackles with such short links. why must I yearn for a someday? why must I wait for the end to begin to find a framework, a logic, to the corporeal form we find our selves in? the claim of our importance in a cosmic scale, beyond our molds as bags of water and electricity. the insult of the endless threat to tow the line. the conceit of faith in a vengeful eye to see each day the way that we fail, the way that we pray, the way that we act, the roles that we hold. I react to the weight. I contract from the heat. I reflect on the words. I recoil from the implications. I retract from the tomes. I turn from the guides. to celebrate an unknown, to plagiarize for a settled claim in the great expanse of the rescued dusk, to surrender. ruined halls and altars, halted bowing heads, lives wasted straining upwards. there is no beyond.