Beautiful Out of Emptiness A refugee’s gaze, O Mustafa, resting on the trunk of a palm, seeking salvation, immortality, in every shard of death— searching for his lost art, his promised extinction. He whispers: When? And my eyes are nothing but the swell of inhale, the fall of exhale. The rain’s embrace does not sway him— why should it matter to me, Mustafa? Shall I care? Is not hell, too, beautiful when born from nothing? Unseen, unheard, light as dust borne on the wind, he drifts, brushed by the murmurs of existence. Has he been saved, I wonder? Or is hell not beautiful, when born of emptiness? He sinks into tides of sand and foam, the seas starve, and the waves cry out: “Tell him the world, light and flame alike, has scattered— as if it had never been.” And you and I, O my self, winds raging, still we wrestle for the land. So tell me, beloved, do you still hold fast to forever? Is not hell beautiful, woven out of nothing? We fight for nothing. We live today only to die tomorrow, dream today only to live tomorrow. And now I dream of death itself. Do I desire it? Yet nothing ever truly dies. You ask me: When? And my eyes are but breath. Here I am, exhaling the last. You ask: of what hell shall I speak? I tear out my eyes, scatter illusion before the dawn. I strip away my shadowed self, rending the veil of eternity’s lie, before hope’s shimmer ensnares me. Before I die today, I choose to live one more day. The sun of tomorrow rises— yet still I linger, ghost of yesterday. Between the shades of grey, I lost myself, and with me, my hope. I carried yesterday’s sun into tomorrow’s sky— and there, before me, truth unveiled: It is I—Oda. Wipe from your eyes the despair of forever. And my tragedy whispers: “Give me your hand. Return what you have torn away: your eyes, and mine, my illusion, and your truth.”