The Mind Is Like a Master Painter

—The mind is a dark jewel hidden deep within flesh.
Expose it to light and it shatters;
leave it in darkness and it multiplies.
It refuses even its owner a clear outline.

For a long time I have tried to understand the mind.
Like an organ placed upon a dissecting table,
I have searched beneath cold light
for a truth that remains silent.
The smell of metal lingers in the back of my throat.

A pulse can be counted.
Breathing can be measured.
Blood pressure can be recorded.

But why do the fingertips tremble?
Why does the chest tighten?
Why do nameless emotions gather water behind the eyes?

Only that refuses to be captured.

I wonder:
if emotion were a disease,
would knowing its name save us?

Love is not a medicine.
Love administered by prescription
provokes a rejection in the soul.

And yet in reality
the things that strike the heart most violently
are nowhere written on a diagnosis.

Unrecorded pain.
Tremors without contour.
Impulses that cannot be proven.

All of them burn
outside the borders of medicine.

—I feel fear before that.
The palms grow cold.

To be ruled by what has no form.
To feel the bones of reason
quietly turning necrotic.
To realize that within oneself
there exists a depth that cannot be measured.

And still
I cannot abandon this mystery.

The moment the mind is understood,
it grows weak.

A feeling that is fully explained
is already a dead feeling.
A passion given clear outline
is like a butterfly pinned for display—
beautiful,
and never to fly again.

I am still alive.
Therefore within me
something inexplicable continues to beat.

It has no meaning.
It obeys no order.
It simply breathes
like a beast
in the depths of the chest.

And so I wish
that someone would open this ribcage
and touch this dark jewel,
even if it must be wounded.

Not with words,
not with diagnosis,
not with theory—
but with the raw force of living flesh.

If someone were to touch it that way,
would this hollow be filled?
Or would it collapse even deeper?

I do not know.

In the end I live without knowing.
Feeling without reason,
trembling without knowing why,
shedding tears without knowing.

And again today
only an inexplicable heartbeat
proves that I exist.

The mind—
is the final territory
that refuses to be named.

No flag of reason stands there.
No blade of dissection reaches it.
A land ruled only by silence.

I live there.

Maps of reason
are useless in this place.
Clutching a blank map,
I walk through my own darkness.

Salvation
is nothing more than an anesthetic
that stops this trembling.

I will continue to radiate
an immeasurable heat,
holding tight to my own unknowable self.

As the single pride
with which I walk to the end
of this illness called life.