He was in deep slumber
for too long,
in absolute silence,
in stark darkness.
Ages had passed.
The space
around him
calcified.
One day,
a terrifying growl
resonating
from the deepest chambers
awakened him.
He landed softly
on the freezing floor
and tried taking the first step.
His bones crackled.
For a moment,
his senses were startled,
his being was stunned.
Gravity
sucked the weight
of his existence.
His frail body,
made up of
feeble twigs and fibers,
collapsed.
Over the next few years,
he chipped
steadily
at a corner of a wall,
close to where he slept.
He was stubborn
and persistent.
He lost everything
in life:
what he stood for,
who he stood for,
friends and folks
who stood by him.
The puppeteer
cut the strings.
There’s nothing more to lose.
When a hairline crack appeared in
the wall,
he pressed his lips
against the gap in the stone
and sucked in the life in the air
from the other side.
His mind
played tricks with him.
The streaming sunlight
nurtured
the god complex.
He banged his head against the
wall
and chanted
to the outside world:
Infinity
does not exist.
This is all there is.
There’s nothing beyond.
There’s nothing beyond us.
The chanting continued
night and day.
The crack
became bigger.
At first,
nobody listened.
Then came a cat,
then a couple of sparrows,
then a human being –
his first follower.
As the days passed,
more and more followers
assembled
outside the enclosed shrine.
One spring afternoon,
the wall
finally
gave in–
he pushed his way
through the dust and rubble.
The crowd
went berserk.
A prophet
has risen
from the ashes.
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