His eyelids fluttered. Grains of sand blanketed his eyelashes; scraping his eyes as he strained to pry them open. His vision was blurred, and a coursing pain rang through his head. A wavy sea of umber surrounded him.

He blinked with the force of a baby’s grasp. He squeezed his eyes shut, then open again. His vision cleared only a moment before the haze returned. His chest was heavy, and a searing pain traveled down his neck and into his back.

He coughed an aching, dry cough. One cough, and sand traveled from his throat down into his lungs. He gasped for air, making his first attempt to raise his hand to his chest. A dizzy spell came over him. He tried to raise his arm again, but the might of soiled earth weighed him down.

In a moment of clarity, he realized he was in the desert. Buried in the sand, packed tightly around him, up to his neck. Trapped in a body cast of soiled, brown, desert clay and to his dismay, it was nearly nightfall.

A storm roared above his head and lightening flashed across the bronze sky. Squinting his eyes with tensity, he struggled to see what was ahead of him, but his blurry vision returned. Sand danced and wailed around him as a wall of billowing dust, miles into the atmosphere, approached.

His eyes widened. The majestic, menacing force of nature hurled toward him. In a blink, the sun lost its bout to darkness and disappeared beneath the mountains.

The ominous cloud of sand barreled closer, and a flash of lightening illuminated it, in one last dance across the horizon. He closed his eyes and braced himself for what was to come. Would he be buried beneath it, or would he survive?

His heart wanders endlessly.

Thinking, praying for what he hopes to be.

Idle yet full of life.

He yields to love and sacrifice.

Patience is his last device.

Gentle as a newborn soul.

A pure love will soon make him whole.

If he should wander near to me,

I'd keep him for eternity.

Death does not discriminate; it decimates anyone in its path.

Be it a star in a far-off galaxy or ours.

It obeys no law, not even time.

It exists in the present, never in the past, and knows nothing of the future.

Death. How could it be so bold?

To take those from us whom we long to hold.

Inevitable. A word most used to describe this harsh, indescribable truth.

A thing of no substance but a void much massive than any other.

Death. With all its mystery and misery,

Still, it is fair.

It does not discriminate but decimates anyone in its path.

The thing we love to hate but are forced to respect.

When I close my eyes, life has no end. My spirit awakens. I can see without sight.

Galaxies float about in beautiful darkness, and stars shine close and bright!

When I close my eyes, I can feel what peace is. Aching muscles relax, the clutter in my mind fades. I focus on being.

The closest thing to freedom, absolute.