A question to ponder - F. D. Jarvis.
you whose eyes now travel these lines,
whose pulse keeps time with each syllable—
lend me your ear, and answer not aloud,
but within the hush where conscience keeps its candles.
Truly answer below or privately.
I ask thee something, and I ask it plainly:
if sorrow were your first inheritance,
if grief were the tutor that raised you,
and every cruel whisper ever spoken
had nested itself deep within your name?
What if the dark were not a place you wandered,
nor a season you survived,
but the shape your soul had learned to keep—
a constant hush, a starless knowing
that joy belonged to others, not to you?
And what if—once, only once—
a living light found you,
when you had lived a lifetime as a shadow?
What if that light believed you gentle,
believed you capable of keeping it whole?
What if love reached you then—
and you believed it, trembling—
only to bruise it with your fear,
only to mar what you swore you would protect?
For intent does not mend what pain remembers,
and regret does not unbreak the heart.
Promises, once spoken, still bleed when broken.
I vowed—hear this—I vowed
never to step out of being,
never to loosen my hold on breath and bone.
I swore it while believing the dark was around me,
a weather I could outlast.
But what if, in the aftermath,
you learned the truth too late—
that you were never lost within the dark,
never merely touched by it—
but were, yourself, its source?
What if, upon wounding the light—
the very light you promised not to damage—
you recognized the script written beneath your skin?
Not a man encircled by despair,
but despair written in flesh,
a moving testament to ruin,
If every place you lingered grew colder,
if every soul you loved learned sorrow,
if your presence felt less like refuge
and more like an omen that apologizes—
tell me, reader, what then?
Would you remain, knowing this?
Would you speak, knowing silence might spare them?
Would you stay, knowing departure could be mercy?
If absence could shield the living,
if erasure could end the harm,
if vanishing were the final kindness left—
that I am not surrounded by darkness,
would you choose to cease,
so that no one would ever suffer you again?
Mmm indeed…. A question to ponder.
 What would you do? Answer below.
