The Selfless Act of Breathing: A Novel

This man knows it, feels it, that it’s only a matter of time until he can walk no more, and his only desire is to lie wherever he finds himself and sleep eternally. He can feel his body succumbing to this will as it grows heavier, as though he is pushing a rock up a mountain, only the mountain is the streets and the rock is his own body.

Michael imagines the heaven in which they reside, a heaven of justice, where peace reigns eternal.

Like homes, we also need to be taken care of as much as we can; and to have something live inside us in order for us to live. But regardless, in the end, we eventually go back to nature, back to death, submerged by the will of the earth. And, in our most earnest moments, maybe we are all just homes, burning, and love is the water that saves us. And

And in the end, what is this salvation we seek? What is faith if nothing else but believing that there is someone out there who will never leave us? What does it mean to be saved and who are we being saved from if not ourselves? If not our demons and our fears?

This house is tired, tired of life. This house looks how I feel.

Are we not the sum of those who have never given up on us?

people only love you as far as you do what they need of you; when you do what you need for yourself, they fade like shadows in the dark.

To disappear into the ether, erased from earth’s eternal memory, any space I previously filled replaced with a void, an emptiness.

But what good is prayer to a god who does not hear?