Silence contrasts with a sudden noise. My ears adjust. My eyes, scrunched closed release their stress and open.

Blaring white. My brain aches...

I find that I am laying down, and adjust myself, sitting upright. Up, down, all around, is shadowless white. I look at the ground beneath me. there is no visible features to it. the same, ever-glowing white as my other infinite surroundings. I try to put my hand past it, but it stops at the same invisible surface. My heartbeat is the only sound.

Clambering to my feet, I begin to become stressed. Like an animal, I run. I sprint with all of my might. Never tiring.

***

has it been a decade? a month? a year? I don't know. I have counted to a billion, recited the lyrics of every song I know, and amused myself with my hands for countless hours-- or at least what felt like hours.

***

I have certainly lived here, in the blankness for longer than anyone has even lived. After doing trillions of cartwheels, jumping jacks, frontflips, backflips, and everything in between for the amusement of nobody in particular, I began to forget the english language. My brain still aches, after all this time. I hate the silence. I tell it stories and sing it songs, and it just watches me, like a zoo animal.

***

after another exponential increment in unkown time, I resort to screaming at the top of my lungs, to hear the droning inside my ear...

At school they tell everyone that they're special. They give trophies for participation, and for doing basic human duties. In middle school, I remember being given a reward because someone saw me throwing away a piece of trash. I was told that I was an "upstander, not a bystander" because I picked up some trash that wasn't mine. because I wouldn't just watch litter happen and not do anything about it. They tried to make me feel above average because I had an atom of motivation in me to use my opposable thumbs to move something about three feet into a trash can. They came up and gave me a free coupon for ice cream or something and a colorful sheet of paper with my name hurriedly misspelled on it. Guess where it went? The trash can.

Parents and teachers try so hard to make their children feel special, that their children believe it. What good does it do? It only makes the realization that they're not special even harder. It makes people feel like they are the protagonists in the universe, when they need to eventually accept the fact that they mean nothing, just like all the rest of mankind. Once we accept that, things are easier.

Silence is happiness.

Silence is fear.

Silence is rejection.

Silence is joy.

Silence is sadness.

Silence is in the ear of the beholder, I suppose.

Importance is relative to the beholder

Fear is the spice of importance

So why is the worst of our worries ourselves?

Nothing kills more.

Nothing destroys more.

Nothing terrorizes more than man.

We need to stop being what we are.

As far as we know

every single multi-cellular thing that has ever lived

has lived on the juice of all life,

water,

its flavor the spite of nobody,

its need the most of any other,

water is the juice of life.

Once upon a field of snow, there stirred a large white hare.

The thoughts, racing in its mind, to move if only you dare.

For keen was a fox, watching behind, who the rabbit did scare,

and knowing the fox, seeing the hare, that its life was his to spare.

"Calm." said the fox, "Calm," to the hare, who sat, cold and still.

"I have no gut that you or your soul could ever strive to fill."

But still it sat, and colder it grew, the breeze the hare did chill,

approach did the fox, softly, it said, "Comrade, are you ill?"

It placed its paw upon the hare, to rustle it from its sleep.

knowing not that death nearby, that nearby death did creep.

Its heartbeat was not, its mind was shot, it had leaped its final leap.

The fox could not cry, it fell to its chest, weeping its final weep.

Nearby stood man, the death nearby, the death who forgiving was not.

And there it had come, and them it had killed without a passing thought.

The curiosity, in eight silent eyes.

The twitching, in furry mandibles.

The readiness, in spring powered legs.

To pounce, like a beast,

though rarely with intent of evil.

These friends to which we are mountains,

are the hardest to accept.

a natural war, a fear, a hatred,

as if their life weighs less than ours.

To see them in disgust.

Even those who cannot harm.

To see their beauty as grotesque

is only natural.

But it removes from us the wonder

which we see in the butterflies.

The webs, the finest silk,

the dew which they capture,

the ornaments which sparkle each morning.

The beauty of these monsters

is long lost.

To us.

The difference between dreams and life

is the lingering vignette

of cloudy subconscious thought.

That is the small window,

made up of the mind,

into the soul.