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

My nerves then exploded as though someone had lit fireworks along my veins.

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

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?

See, I believed in her to the point of worship. Would kneel, palms touching, hands clasped, eyes closed, to a god with her face, praying she would never leave. It felt as though my prayers were being heard, but the day she left came to me like a summer storm.

There was an engulfing grayness creeping in from the corners of my being to the core. I couldn’t tell if this was imagination or reality, but I knew it was there.

“Breathe. Everything is you. Everything is coming to you. There is nothing that you do not know; that you have not always known. You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are nothing, and everything, eternal and current, distant and near. Release yourself of attachment, of possessions, of all things that bind you, and bring yourself to

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

So, this is what love is, to be burdened yet weightless, to be bound yet free.