The more I seek,

the more I speak.

I hide the shame

of wanting fame,

to stay ahead

of the cruel thread

of countless posts

that leave me lost,

made me forget

to live and smile,

the sun, the shine,

just being fine—

just a short walk

under the sun

can give so much

and slow the rush.

A.O. Homorodean

The world is wider than the screen.

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Its face in sight,
a bath of light,
with wings so bright,
with strength and might.

He’s made of flame,
of endless name,
with every stroke
he shares his love.

But flame can bless
and flame can scar;
what shines too near
may burn too far.

Its holy glow
consumes the air;
devotion blinds
the ones who stare.

A.O. Homorodean

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Silence drops like a weight. His ears ring—thin, electric, mean. The quiet doesn’t soothe; it exposes. It opens the door.

The first thoughts come like insects: small, fast, everywhere. Bad decisions. Wrong turns. Moments that stuck to him. Work, again his boss smiling while pushing a knife in, and him standing there, swallowing it. A colleague’s cheap cruelty, and him doing nothing. His ex-girlfriend turned the breakup into his confession; blaming him despite her anger, calling him the problem, accusing him of poor communication while she punished him with days of silence over a broken glass, a careless joke, a breath taken the wrong way.

The mind doesn’t remember; it prosecutes. It drags him back into rooms that no longer exist and forces him to stand there again. It makes him rehearse lines he never said, scripts he’ll never deliver. He wins the argument in his head. He humiliates them. He walks away clean, untouchable. He rewinds. He repeats. The same scene, the same rage, the same hunger to rewrite what can’t be rewritten.

He told himself it was a good deal: less screen time, more reality. As if reality were a virtue. As if it were safe. It wasn’t. Reducing screen time was a bad deal. Staying closer to reality was a mistake.

Reality is merciless. It’s a place that takes. It doesn’t offer quiet moments. It doesn’t bargain. It doesn’t let him rest. The phone wasn’t the trap. The phone was the cover. The phone kept the worst part of him asleep.

Then he has a moment of lucidity, a rare occurrence.

He grabs his car keys. Outside, the air is cold and indifferent. He gets in, starts the engine, and drives. The radio stares back at him, keeping him one button away from noise, from anesthesia. He tries not to touch it. He tries to stay present. But his thoughts crawl back in anyway, and the road turns into a tunnel.

Highway lights flick past like a pulse. His clarity comes and goes, flickering, failing. And then, in one sharp moment, it holds long enough for the truth to speak.

Why keep spending your life like a wage, working, surviving, tolerating, when it ends the same way regardless? One day he will die, and whatever he did will collapse into nothing. Once he is gone, everything is gone. Once he is dead, time is dead too. The world continues, but not for him. For him, everything is finished: people, memories, victories, shame, all sealed shut.

So why?

He looks at the radio, then back at the traffic. He thinks hard for a while, and then, without hesitation, he presses the On button.

Music fills the car. Voices take the place of the voices in his head and make them drift, slowly, away.

Ah, noise—a lifesaver.

A.O. Homorodean

Sometimes the phone, the scrolling, the constant input aren’t addictions first; they’re defenses, delaying collapse.

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“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
— Psalm 34:18

In my own ruin,
there’s grief, there’s sin.
On my own skin,
with burns—unclean.

I feel it within.
it makes me scream,
to run unseen.

Within my heart,
a glow, a spark—
there’s something good;
I think I could
do one more thing,
say one more word
and be heard,
say one more prayer,
breathe in the air.

No longer sad—
with hope in God,
He takes my pain,
He makes me sane.

A.O. Homorodean

Life doesn’t need much; it needs only you.

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The day I died, I tried to fly
I tried to speak the truth and smile
That day of sun and shine and cry
I walked alone the path of right

Of people made, a road of sand
Each step collapsed the one behind
It broke my hope, it made me shy
It took my wings, it showed me why

You want the truth—you have to lie
There’s no such thing as a straight line

You have no wings—you want to fly?!
Just think of Icarus—he tried.

There are no more stars in the night sky
I took them all, I made them mine.

I jumped to high.
I tried to fly.

A.O. Homorodean

I’m trying to build something on Substack. This poem is about me, and about many others. Let’s hope this trying doesn’t end in burnout.

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Stars shining,
I saw them for the first time in your eyes.

Storms rising,
they started on your lips.

Dreams of a perfect place,
where do you want to start?

Hopes of forever,
how do you want to live your life?

Don’t lose your immortal soul.

Look up,
not even your dreams will stay forever.

Jump high,
dare to speak the truth.

It’s not me,
it’s the world that barely smiles.

Your heart,
is the only one that cries.

But this life,
breaks me, mile after mile.

A.O. Homorodean

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“I have done so much just to have enough to lose ” Goes trought Markus head, standing in the bus, near the doors with a gigarete in his mouth, unpatiently waiting for the next stop just to be able to get out and light it.

The" bus reaches the Northbound station.
The doors slide open, and he steps out.

Before his second foot even hits the ground, he lights the cigarette he’s been holding between his lips. He inhales deeply, staring down at the sidewalk as if something might reveal itself there.

A horn snaps him out of it; a driver swerves aggressively to avoid a cyclist, that somehow manage to live another day.

He starts walking looking down at the pavement The half-smoked cigarette lands behind him, a spark fading on the pavement. After a few moments lost in thought, he impatiently lights another. Soon, he reaches the entrance of a tall building. He presses the buzzer and waits.

The glass door reflects him — unshaven, hair grown too long since his last visit to the barber. He stares at the reflection until the lock clicks open, ending his brief drift into nowhere.

The elevator is out of order. Eight floors of stairs remind him why smoking is a bad idea.

The apartment door is open, waiting.

“Mom, why’d you leave the door open?” he calls, stepping inside.
“You know this isn’t a nice neighborhood.”

“I knew it was you,” his mother answers from the kitchen.
“I know the time you come home. It’s always the same.

And what would someone even steal from us? Robbing us would be a bad business — they’d leave the same way they came,” the same voice replies.

“Yes, but—” he starts, while closing the door behind him, then stops as she interrupts.

“How was work today, Markus?” she asks, coming to greet him with a smile.

“The way it always is, Mom. Same people, same tasks, same money. Even the same damn flies.”

“The same flies?” she laughs. “You should pay attention to work, not to the flies.”

“That’s what I do all day. The flies just don’t leave me alone,” he mutters.

“Oh, the flies!” she chuckles, shaking her head.

His thoughts drift elsewhere for a brief moment; to his wife, to his child, to that day they left.

“Did you talk to your wife today, son?” she asks.

“My ex-wife, Mother,” he says, sharper than he means to.

“Did you talk to Rebecca?” she asks again, using her name.

“No. Not today.” He pauses. “But she’s not coming back. I’m sure of that.”

“You don’t know that,” she says softly. “You just need to take control of your addiction and end it.”

“My addiction won again today,” he says, pulling a lottery ticket from his pocket and placing it on the table.
He tries to look at her, but shame pushes his eyes down. His breathing grows fast and uneven; he becomes nervous.

She looks at him, then at the ticket. For a moment she says nothing. Then, gently:
“Well, at least you’re sharing it with me. That’s a good start. You know what they say — know your enemy.”

“Who says that?” Markus asks quietly. “Who are they?”

She shrugs. “I don’t remember. Read it somewhere, I think.”

“Wasted money again,” he says. “But damn it, I can’t control it. It tricks my mind. There’s always that voice Maybe today your life will change. and the voice was right my life has changed since i heard it the first time ”

“You’ll get control of it,” she says. “You will. And when you do, things will get better.”

Markus looks at her without saying nothing.

“Dinner’s almost ready. Go wash your hands now.” she rushes him.

He leaves the room without replying. The ticket stays on the table.

In the bathroom, he turns on the water, watches it run, then shuts it off and rushes to the balcony, where lights another cigarette.

My life is fucked up, he thinks, staring into the city night.

He sees his son watching him leave that day, confused.
He sees the casinos, the tickets, the slow decay of everything he once was.

That vice took his mind and his money, and made him lose control, doing things despite knowing they led to self-destruction.
The vice didn’t care. The vice never does.

He looks over the railing, flicks the cigarette away, and lights another.
Dark thoughts take shape.

If I jump, it’s over. Three, maybe four seconds to hit the ground. Terrifying ones, sure, but still.
Hanging might be better. Quicker. Hanging somewhere — it doesn’t need to be high. Put the rope around my neck, sit down, go unconscious, and it’s done.

He exhales smoke into air.
But tomorrow, he decides. Not today. I bought the damn lottery ticket, I might as well wait until after the draw.

He grips the balcony rail. His knees bend slightly, like a diver’s. Then he lets go.

“Tomorrow,” he mutters. “Fucking tomorrow.”

“‘Coward,’ he mutters between his lips.” He tosses the cigarette into the dark, wastes another moment gathering himself, and goes back inside.

“Did you enjoy the spaghetti and meatballs I packed for work?” his mother asks.

“They tasted better than anything money can buy,” he says.

“I’m happy to hear that. This way, we can save a bit.”
She hugs him.

They sit down. His mother smiles. It’s been a long time since she’s heard warmth in his voice. That gives her hope, puts a masks over the heaviness of the situation for a moment.
Maybe he can still turn his life around, she thinks.

“Mom, this is another masterpiece. Fantastic,” he says, eating.
“I hope a little’s left for tomorrow.”

His eyes flicker toward the yellow ticket on the table, and some thoughts pour back into his head.
Ah, tomorrow…

His mother notices his mood shifting. She tries to keep it light to keep the mask on.

“I remember your father; tall, strong. He could fix anything. I never had to call a plumber or something. You always looked up to him.”

“I still do,” Markus says, taking some deep breaths. “Even if he’s no longer here.”

The mention of his father darkens the room again.

“I’m done eating,” he says, standing. “Thanks, Mom.”
He carries his plate to the sink, leaves the kitchen, then turns back.
He’s forgotten something…

The ticket!

which he spots it laying on the table. He picks it up, glances at the numbers, slips it into his pocket, and walks to the living room.

For a moment he just stands there, lost.
“Ah,” he says to himself. “The TV.”

Soon the numbers will be drawn.
Life or death, he thinks. To be or not to be.

He smirks. “But until then — to be.”

The television flickers. His eyes reflect the light.
He watches, barely breathing, like his life is on the line.
Actually, it is.

The first number — right.
The second — right again.
The third — his eyebrow lifts.
The fourth — his heart stumbles.
The fifth — his whole body tingles.
The last — fits.

All the numbers match with the ones written on the ticket.

He’s won!!

“Fuck that balcony!” he yells.

Tears pour down his face.
This is it, this is the moment that washes everything clean.

But behind the euphoria, patient and merciless, reality overwhelms him.

He sees it all again: his wife, his son, the eyes that stopped trusting him.
He’d risked everything for the rush.

The suffering he caused his family, the look in his son’s eyes as he had to leave their house.
His wife yes, she left him, and she was right to do that.

He put them both in danger.
He risked their family’s well-being just to keep his vice alive, his vice that didn’t care, that didn’t play fair.
It ripped his life apart and led him to destruction.

This moment can give him a second chance to make up with his wife and kid.
The vice had eaten him alive.

But now, now everything will be all right.

Now I can fix it, he thinks. Now everything will be all right. I beat it. I fought it, and I won.
Money could solve all my problems, he says to himself, still sitting on the sofa.

He tries to stand, but his body feels heavy.
A ringing fills his ears.
Pain flashes through his arm.
His chest tightens.

The world narrows to a tunnel of blur; he can barely see the room, the ticket even less.

The ticket slips from his hand, but his fingers close around it again, rigid and white.
He feels his wife’s warmth, hears his son’s laughter, and then nothing.

His mother hears his shout and rushes in.
She calls his name, touches his face, but he’s already too far away, rushing down that tunnel before his eyes.

Everything fades.
After a few short breaths, his chest relaxes after one last exhale.

He lies on the floor, the winning ticket clenched in his hand.

His mother stares at the ticket for a long moment, glances at the TV, then whispers almost to herself:

“Jackpot.”

A.O. Homorodean

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I love you, but:

I’m yours; you don’t own me.

I belong with you: I don’t belong to you.

I choose you, and I remain myself.

I walk beside you, not behind you.

I grow with you, not into you.

I share my life, not surrender it.

Love without ownership.

Affection without submission.

Closeness without erasure.

This is what love is defined by.

A.O. Homorodean

Want to read more of my work? See How to Bury a Seed

This is a one-person publication, and subscribing helps it grow.

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You think about home,
about that place
of warmth and change.
You think about home.
You dream the road
that brought you home.


You were small but bold,
climbing the trees,
climbing the trees,
the highest trees —
you think about home.


A cold wind breeze,
it lifts the leaves
on that old road,
that dirty road,
your road to home.

A.O. Homorodean

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Their rims were tall and awesome, and the rims of all four were full of eyes all around.

(Ezekiel 1:18)

Maybe the fallen angel is not pure evil, but the part of God that refused to align with what “good” was defined to be.
Not rebellion in the dramatic sense, but doubt. A question. A thought that did not fit into perfection.

If God is absolute, then nothing ambiguous can remain within Him. Absolute goodness cannot tolerate contradiction. And so, being almighty, God tore that part from Himself. Not out of weakness, but contrary out of mightiness and self control, out of necessity. Purity was preserved through separation.

Scripture tells us that no one can see God and live. This is often read as a moral warning, but perhaps it is something more literal than that. Perhaps no human can endure pure goodness without being overwhelmed by it. Not because goodness is cruel, but because it is infinite, unfiltered, unbearable to what is finite and contaminated.

Imperfection cannot stand in the face of overwhelming perfection.

The Bible itself seems to understand this logic. Again and again, it favors removal over integration. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. Not as a command to mutilate the body, but as a metaphor for inner division. Not flesh, but impulses. Not eyes, but ways of seeing. Not hands, but ways of acting, everything that drives you into sin. Not heal it. Not negotiate with it. Remove it. Amputate it. Separate the part that is toxic. Save the whole by sacrificing the part.

If humans are instructed to do this to remain righteous, it is not unreasonable to imagine that God did something similar first.

The Old Testament reflects a world where good and evil still coexist within the same order. Law is harsh. Justice is violent. “Eye for an eye” governs survival. God appears as warrior, judge, divider. Force is still necessary because contradiction has not yet been fully expelled, and Heaven is still impure.

When Moses returns with the law, he finds the people worshipping another god. There is no mercy. God orders death. This is not an exception, it is the rule. Early goodness does not tolerate deviation. It protects itself through violence because it is still conflicted. Purity is not yet possible, only control.

Then, according to later tradition, comes the battle in heaven. A separation. What cannot align is cast out. Angels fall. Heaven is purified. Whether we understand heaven as a place or as God’s own order, or even God Himself, the meaning is the same: contradiction is no longer contained and tolerated. It is removed.

Only after this does Jesus appear.

And Jesus does not come as a warrior. He does not bring new laws of retaliation. He teaches the opposite:

Do not fight back. Turn the other cheek. Forgive endlessly. Love your enemies.

This shift is too radical to be ignored.

Perhaps Jesus’ teachings are not instructions for a world still at war, but the ethics of a world where the war has already ended. Where evil has been exiled. Where there is nothing left to fight, only something left to forgive.

In this light, non-violence is not naive. It is post-conflict. Forgiveness is not weakness. It is what remains when purity no longer needs defending.

If God is now pure purity, without doubt, without contradiction, then Jesus’ message makes sense. There is no longer a need for force. Only mercy. Only restraint. Only love that absorbs violence instead of returning it.

This also reframes evil itself. Evil is not an equal opposite to good. It is what good could not keep within itself. Not rebellion, but remainder. Not a rival kingdom, but that small thought of revenge, that doubt, or darkness.

Hell, then, is not opposition, is a place for everything perfection could not contain.

And humans, caught between these realities, inherit the split. We carry good and evil not as moral failure, but as design. We are torn because something before us was torn first.

Perhaps this is why we are both drawn to goodness and the same time being good is seen as weakness Why purity inspires awe and fear at the same time. Why Scripture warns that no one can see God and live. It’s not as threat, it’s just the truth.

Pure goodness is not gentle. It is overwhelming.

If heaven and hell are not places but states, then they do not wait for us after death, they are already here. Not as geography, but as consciousness.

Heaven would not be a reward, but a condition: a state of conscience in which nothing is divided against itself. A mind at peace because nothing within it is at war.

Hell, then, would not be punishment, but dissonance. A state where contradiction remains unresolved. Where impulses pull in opposite directions. Where separation is internal rather than cosmic. Not fire and torment, but endless friction of the mind.

This fits disturbingly well with the earlier logic. If God removed from Himself what could not align with absolute goodness, then hell is not rebellion against God, but distance from coherence. Not exile from a place, but exile from harmony.

A.O. Homorodean

These were the living creatures I had seen under the God of Israel by the Kebar River, and I knew that they were cherubim.

Ezekiel 10:20

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One rainfall can change the world.
A few drops of water can save a life… or steal it.

A breeze can carry you safely to shore,
or leave you stranded in the middle of the ocean.

Suffering can tear us apart,
or teach us to know ourselves in ways nothing else ever could.

Happiness shows us how good it feels not to be hurt,
and how rarely that happens.

Belief and faith,  the softest words we know,
can give meaning to life… or create monsters that end it.

Power can protect the fragile,
or convince the strong they are untouchable.

Hope can keep us standing on broken legs,
or delay the moment we finally face reality.

Time can heal wounds we once thought fatal,
yet it has been killing us from the moment we are born.

Love can give meaning to a lifetime,
or dissolve into pain and obsession.

Knowledge can ease our lives,
or make stars fall back to Earth.

A.O Homorodean

The fire does not change.
Only our distance from it does.

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The meaning of life is that it stops.

—Franz Kafka

I often think life is a kind of punishment, put in place by a higher force; maybe God trying to show us what it means to live with beginnings and endings, and how, no matter what we do, the inevitable will still come. This could be the definition of Hell.

When we say that death is what makes life worth living, it’s only to console ourselves, some words spoken by those who will eventually face death, a face-off always won by death. But what truly makes life worth living is not death itself, but not knowing what lures behind it. Could it be that eternity waits for us there? But who would dare to take that chance? And what form would such eternity take?

This not knowing is also the reason Death has always appeared to us as a hidden figure, mysterious, faceless, a creation of our own minds. Because our own boundaries keep us in a zone where the unknown terrifies us unless we disguise it as something we know.

We speak of acceptance as if it were courage, but most of the time it is simply fear in disguise, fear of facing an ending we cannot negotiate with, fear of the unknown that follows the moment when the lights of this life fade and we wait to see, to live what the next moment will bring, if anything at all.

Our ultimate desire is to reach or better live something no one has lived before, something no one knows or has ever seen. It is the unknown that pulls us forward, simply because it terrifies us. So we rebel against the limits placed upon us. We try, and in many cases manage to exceed every boundary imposed on us by nature: speed, communication, flight, all the extraordinary things that made the ordinary slowly become intolerable.

It sounds far better, and feels far safer, to create our own version of eternity, one where we have control, where we know what it holds for us; to reach that moment when the human being becomes truly the master of its own fate. A fate no longer decided by something we cannot see or understand, an entity that keeps us in uncertainty, but by something we measured, designed, and built ourselves.

Would that be a life worth living?

Would that be a death worth dying?

A.O. Homorodean

Thank you for giving a few minutes of your life to read this.

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                                              “Life is creation, and creation is art.”
                                                 —A.O. Homorodean

                                                             

Even higher at your peak, 
when life shabeing, 
is the nothingness you seek. 
 
When the house you built is mourning, 
you have left. 
You stepped into the silence 
you had slipped. 
On the paths into oblivion, 
you have wept. 
 
Raise your head, 
open your eyes. 
 
There is nothing like forgiveness 
when the magic is long past, 
’cause the fire of existence 
will not last. 
 
Raise your head, 
open your eyes. 
 
All the tears you’ve lost while crying, 
drops of happiness and smiling, 
laid on shores of strange and failing, 
which are lost. 
 
Raise your head, 
open your eyes. 
 
Even higher at your peak, 
when life shakes you from your being, 
is the nothingness you seek. 
 
Awed by music, art, and beauty, 
you have something on your heart. 
Know you’ll fade into oblivion, 
but you’re still doing your part. 

Thank you for reading.

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What you’re about to read is a reflective and philosophical essay on modern society about how algorithms, habits, and overstimulation reshape our emotions, our instincts, and our sense of authenticity.

One thing I can understand well this days is saying no or avoiding direct social interactions. This it may sound weird but It’s actually not, it is direction our modern ways of interaction drives us to. No wonder we lose interest in them after being constantly exposed to social stimulation on our phones and not only.. Of course, digital and personal interactions are very different; but it seems our brain doesn’t fully recognize that difference. It reacts the same way: overwhelmed, exhausted, and too tired to make a healthy decision.

What happens is that over time, this exhaustion has built something strange inside us, you can called it addiction, and it fits very well but I see it more like an algorithm of the self . An algorithm not written in code, but carved in dopamine, habit, and repetition, of chemicals and behavior Each time we scroll, like, or comment, we train this inner system which starts acting like on its own, pushing us to repeat what once felt good, whether we want to or not. We act not out of will anymore , but out of some sort of programming, by something that carved our behavior and reaction to suit it own interests, made by what we see too often, by what the platforms feed us.

No wonder how difficult it is to resist this urge, because the entire environment is designed to keep us stimulated. The noise, the notifications, the endless like and respond to something or someone. (And I say something because we all know this someone could be not even a real person). They all play into the same cycle: dopamine drives habits, and habits exist to seek more dopamine. It’s a loop, one that feels like choice but behaves like compulsion.

It’s something like this: if you don’t care what you see, you don’t care what you believe.

I’m not a neuroscientist, nor am I trying to be one. I am just someone trying to make sense of a world that moves faster than we can emotionally process it.

And on top there’s another layer; those “entities” within us. Consciousness, instinct, emotion, reason. They coexist, argue, and negotiate every action we take. But what happens when one of them, the instinct, for example, is constantly contradicted by the world we’ve built?

For millennia, our survival depended on social bonds. To belong was to stay alive. Isolation meant danger, even death. But now, we live in an age that constantly overloads those same instincts. We’re oversaturated with connection, flooded with virtual interactions that mimic social closeness while draining our emotional energy. So, paradoxically, the more we connect online, the more we withdraw offline.

It’s not surprising that so many minds react chaotically to this. Our instincts were built for tribes, not timelines. The code written in our genetics, the one that made us seek faces, voices, touch is now forced to live inside a world of screens, avatars, and endless noise. No wonder so many of us are mentally exhausted, anxious, or detached.

We call it progress. But maybe, somewhere between the dopamine hits and the algorithms, we’ve stopped asking who is really making the decisions; us, or the systems we’ve built inside and outside ourselves.

We try to teach machines or programs emotions while we ourselves slowly unlearn them.
But what they produce is only emotion by imitation, emotion by prediction,
emotion without a heartbeat.

A.O. Homorodean

Putting a subscribe or share button under a piece about emotional overload felt absurd, so I didn’t.
Well, except for the ones Substack automatically includes.

Uncertain, he takes a few steps back and stares at her, as if his eyes were saying, “How can it be?!”
He still avoids coming close, as if afraid, undecided.

She smiles, reaches onto the table in front of her, draws a cigarette from the half-empty pack, puts it between her lips, and lights it. With a deep breath, she inhales the first puff.

“Sit with me,” she says, pointing at the empty chair at her table.

“You… you want me to stay?” he asks, hardly believing his ears, watching as she exhales the smoke with elegance.

“Not really. Nobody wants you around. But you came uninvited,” she says, coughing and dropping the cigarette into the ashtray.

When the coughing subsides, she adds, “You’re here now, so you might as well stay a while.”

“I rarely come uninvited,” he replies, taking a seat just as she lights another cigarette.

Her expression shifts from passive to surprised as he sits at her table. She tempted him, called him to her, but never truly meant, or believed, that he would come and stay.

The figure in the hoodie rests his elbows on the table and cradles his face in his hands, locking eyes with her, smiling as she draws on her cigarette.

They look at each other in silence. The ashtray fills, and now she begins to toss the smoked cigarettes onto the ground, under the table, all around her. Fear creeps in as she looks at the one across from her. Yet she doesn’t stop smoking. She can’t.

“I like a woman who smokes,” he finally says, his voice breaking the silence. His gaze lingers on her. “I like to taste it on her tongue. Smell it in her breath. See it on her skin.”

With another cigarette between her lips, she freezes at hearing these words and spits it out. Now she understands who sits before her, claiming her table, warming her chair. She tries to speak, but the fear of that moment chokes her. She rises and stumbles forward, but her breath grows heavy, her chest burning. After only a few steps, she is exhausted.

He comes from behind and gently grabs her hand. At his touch, she turns and looks into his face with horror.

“I know you. I recognize you,” she says, breathing hard, her whole-body trembling with weakness.

“Yes,” he answers. “It’s me. Say my name.”

“Cancer,” she whispers, with her last breath.

A.O. Homorodean

Addiction is seductive. I hope you didn’t light a cigarette while reading.

Take care of your health. It’s the only story you can’t rewrite.

You cand read more flash and short fiction here:

The Hunt

Once Upon a Time: A Twisted Fairy Tale - Part 1

Once Upon a Time: And They Lived Happily Ever After – Part 2

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Dear Substack,

Please help me
connect more deeply with myself.

Help me listen —
and truly understand
my inner voice.

Help me get inspired.
Help me find my muse.

Do not make me invisible
if I leave you be
for a day or two.

Dear Substack,

Be kind with my posts,
and gentle with my notes.

Let my words find
those who need to hear them,
and let the words I need to hear
find me.

Do not let me be discouraged
by the ones who do not.

Dear Substack,

Remind me
that creation is not a contest,
but a conversation
between spirits of creativity.

Because when the numbers fall,
and I begin to doubt myself,
let me remember
why I began to write at all.

Dear reader,

you are the one who has full control,

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The day you found me, I was lost,
Your tenderness, and care of rose.
The day you took me, I was weak,
You’re what I want, you’re what I seek.

In rain, we’re hiding under trees,
A kiss of love in summer’s breeze.
Upon your face, your hair falls wet,
That smile of rain I can’t forget.

We walked the park, the sun looked shy,
There by the water, we learned to fly.
You fed me your love with a spoon
I can’t forget the taste of June.

You brought with you the brightest Moon,
You gave me everything too soon.
Under the Moon, we learned to cry,
Under the Moon, under the sky.

I don’t know if you’ll take me back,
I wish I’d known to better act...
And want to tell you on my part,
I love you to the Moon and back.

A.O. Homorodean

I missed writing poetry again, so I did it, and this is what came out.

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The good thing hope does in such situations is that it helps you cheat reality for a while, or at least for a moment. This is useful when you are confronted with something that has the potential to shock you, or when you are about to be overwhelmed.

It could also be that hope has a strong and close bond with imagination, because somehow they do a similar thing. Hope makes you believe in a possibility when there is only a small probability, and imagination turns that small probability into a genuine possibility. After all, everything happens in your mind, and there, there are no borders to be held or seen.

What does hope mean, and what does it give you in return?

Hope can protect, deceive, and sustain. It bends reality just enough for us to survive it, to keep moving until we are ready to face what is.

I don’t know about your case, but in most cases, the answer is either hope or vice, or maybe both.

In my case, it was hope. It helped me deal with something I thought I couldn’t survive, it quite literally saved my life.

Let’s not forget the old truth:

“Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.”
(You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.)
— Juvenal, Satires, Book X, line 356

A.O. Homorodean

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Perhaps what lies behind all writing is the quiet suspicion that our own lives were written first, that someone, somewhere, decided what would happen and why.

Maybe that’s why we, as humans, are so driven to create: to write, to paint, to build and innovate. It gives us the illusion, or the gift of control. It lets us author something when so much of our existence feels prewritten.

We create to escape the thought that we, too, might be creations. That our paths, our loves, our endings were scripted long before we arrived, part of a story a higher being wrote for us to live inside.

“God made man because He loves stories.”
Elie Wiesel

And yet, perhaps the structure simply continues, perhaps it’s our turn now, or soon. Maybe we are destined to create something that will breathe, see, hear, and taste everything around it. Something that will learn to question its own existence, to search for meaning, and to wrestle with the same mysteries that haunt us now.

And we will play the role of spectators, silent and curious, watching as our creation struggles through time, builds, destroys and begins to ask: “Who are we?” or “Who are they?”, “Who is watching?”.

But we, as creators, will not intervene. We will not answer, nor give any sign. We will only watch in quiet awe as everything unfolds, amazed at how life continues to write itself, again, and again, through every form it finds, without having the smallest impact on us.

If so, why should God intervene?

“The play’s the thing.”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet

A.O. Homorodean

If you’d like to continue on this theme read Love, Death & Gods (Not Robots)

You might also like: Today in Short Essays: A Perspective on Hope

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His gaze remains for a few moments on the books. The gold letters Once Upon a Time still shine faintly on every cover, the torn pages and bent corners speaking of stories read too often and believed too much.

While his eyes stay on them for that brief moment, the Princess quietly grabs a knife lying nearby, and when he turns back, she is already trying to stab him in the face.

He easily blocks her arm and grabs hold of the knife. She then starts to scream. The Prince gently pushes her onto the bed, holding her down with one arm.

Instinctively, he looks toward his sword lying on the wall near the entrance door. After locating it, he turns back to the Princess, who is still trying to free herself from his grip.

“My Lady, what do you want me to do?”

“Go away,” she answers.

“Leave, find a white horse, clean your armour, clean yourself, and then come back,” the Princess adds.

He looks at the door inside her room, then at the pile of books at his feet, and finally at her again.

“Can I at least eat and drink something before I go?” the Prince asks.

“Don’t you dare take it,” she answers.

He lets go of her and takes two steps back, putting some distance between them, and asks again.

“Can I at least have some water, My Lady? I am dying of thirst.”

“There is no use in that for you. Maybe you fooled the Dragon on your way in, but you will not escape him on your way out. I did not hear you two fighting,” the Princess says.

“Dragon?” he asks, confused.

“Yes,” she answers. “He spits fire and tears everyone apart,” she adds, smiling with closed lips and tightening her fists.

“Of course, the Dragon,” the Prince says, calm but slightly ironic, looking around.

He takes another step back and reaches the entrance door. While still facing her, he grabs his sword and slides it into its scabbard.

“When did you last see this Dragon, My Lady? When was the last time you heard it?” the Prince asks her.

“He is always there, ferocious, with grey skin, and missing an ear from the fight he had with the knights who gave their lives trying to reach me,” the Princess tells him in a serious tone, while sweat starts to form on her skin and her eyes begin to twitch.

“How many were they? How many tried to rescue you, My Lady?” he presses.

“There were many, but none made it this far. No one was brave enough to pass the beast. But you…” She pauses, realising he is actually the first one she has seen until now. For a moment, she steps outside of her books, the books she spent almost all her time reading, the same tales that had twisted her sense of reality.

“I have had enough of this. I will be on my way and leave you be,” he says, interrupting her short moment of clarity with his last words. Then he exits the room, closes the door behind him, and carefully makes his way down the stairs.

Outside, on the entrance door of the tower, he scratches with his knife the words:

You can’t kill this beast. Turn back.

After that, he throws the white piece of cloth he used to wipe his sweat, picks up his helmet, and starts walking in the direction of the forest. Through the tall grass, under the heat of the day that makes the birds silent and the animals hide in the shadows of the trees, he walks on. He thinks about a river not far away, the one he passed yesterday. He just has to endure the thirst a little longer.

Suddenly, he hears a bark, and from the tall grass, a skinny dog rises, wagging its tail as it approaches him.

The Prince, surprised, looks at the dog coming closer, and as it reaches him, he understands. Kneeling down, he pats the dog gently and says:

“You grey-skin, one-eared Dragon.”

Then he heads into the woods, the dog following close behind.

A.O. Homorodean

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