On the Cusp of Existence, I Wonder
I screamed into the void, asking
And the universe: a blank, uncaring reach of time
Said nothing,
Likewise to the millions before me.
Science says I am a product of miosis
That I rose from a sea of amino acids
Pooled on a speck of cosmic dust
A testament to natural selection
Embedded in 1.618, golden, evolved, biochemically
Structured, predictable, meticulous.
Matter and time is all that there is
I exist, c'est tout, and all is blankness,
A canvas where I hold the paints, nihilist
A living amalgamation of fossilised experiences
That ceases being in totality the moment
of the cessation of my heart. Reality resumes.
Or are we suspended in Milton’s mass of Chaos,
Plato's shadows on the wall of a cave?
Bearing such eschatology, will I be
Trapped in an Inferno or a Kafkaesque limbo?
Are we projections in an absurd, brutalist matrix
In blind conformity to pre-coded proclivities? So,
Maybe I am bound by an all-encompassing Fate,
As the Greek tragedians pen of a dismal Oedipus
Forever confined to a future predestined
As a Raskolnikov or a Napoleon
Shaped by the snipping, cutting, and measuring of
Mystic thread. Pawns in an arbitrary, celestial design.
And whether reality is a construct of matter or fate
How should we then live? Tethering our existence to
Some unyielding, abstract, ethical decree?
Grasping for some order, some de jure legitimacy
Knowing that behind Manichean depths of conscience lies
Promises of an elusive truth. Provided it exists.
Do all roads lead to heaven?
Contradictions cannot co-exist, and I too
Am paradoxical: spiritually anorexic,
Starved yet repelled by nourishment, if
you could even call it that—
Struggling for a shard of autonomy.
It's teetering on the edge of a cliff
With a dizzying sense of vertigo
You fly when you believe, they say
Take a
leap
of
faith. But I am afraid to
plummet.
So I stand there, with scraped knees
And unanswered pleas simply
Looking down
On the cusp of existence, I wonder.
annaxmalina
2087
izzy806
