“I am dying,” he thought. “I have been dying ever since I was born.” Well, of course, that’s undeniable for all of us, so what’s the problem? “Eat something. Have a drink. Go fall in love.” His mind is talking back to him, that curious inner voice, our constant nattering companion, offering gratuitous advice again.

“I was in love once.”

“And wasn’t that grand enough to live large in the moment, to flood that space between birth and death with sheer selfish/selfless exhilaration of breathless moments?”

“I don’t want to think about it any more. You tell me things I don’t want to hear right now. Leave me alone.”

“Yes, but please note that we are alone.”

A memory lives in this same noggin, but doesn’t talk back…

“Walking on the sands

I decided to leave you.

I was treading a dark clay

that trembled

and I, sinking and coming out,

decided that you should come out

of me, that you were weighing me down

like a cutting stone,

and I worked out your loss

step by step:

to cut off your roots,

to release you alone into the wind.”   Pablo Neruda