🔵 By Thomas Riffenburg. Photo by lauragrafie.
They tell me I’m wrong for the way I live, so they took away my life to live. Not with death did they take life from me, for mercy cannot be given, but with a cage they took my life. Bound and separated from all that is live. Is this the righteous actions of righteous men, this punishment just and noble?
I am not so naive to believe that I am beyond the need for punishment, yet not even I could guiltlessly condemn my worse enemy to such a fate. How strange, how sad, that death seems to be the only relief to be had for me. Of course to die now would be to escape my punishment, so death must come with its own time. I must wither away in solitude first, a prerequisite for a man as I. I have never prayed, yet I prayed for death to come. I don’t know if this makes me selfish, I just wish the pain to end. Not the ever present pain of cold and hunger do I speak of, but the pain of nothing. Nothing, silent solitude till life ends, is so heavy and painful.
I saw a bird accidentally trapped in a cell like mine once. It made me angry. Later at night, cloaked in darkness, I cried silently. I don’t know if those tears made me weak, but I couldn’t hold them back. I would have given the bird freedom over myself, I don’t know why though. Perhaps death will come today, quick and sudden, how I wish for that. I hope it doesn’t take much longer.