Vacuum... Solus... Beyond silence. Beyond the end of sound. No form remains, no line, no wall, no event to rise or fall. The history of the world is gone, not as ruin, not as dawn. Only the space where things once were, only the breath without the word. No witness left, no eye, no ear, no one to say that I was here. Darkness was something I could feel, an emptiness that seemed too real. But now even the dark has gone, and what remains is not the dawn. Silence is still something. Still a shape, still a sound. But past the silence, past the still, is the hollow that cannot be found. The silence before nothing! Not absence, not void, not peace! Even silence is too loud now, even stillness must cease! We have reached the edge of edge, the end of every end! Where even nothing is too much, and even silence cannot bend! I thought the last thing left would be a memory of you, a memory of me. But memory itself has gone away, and even loss has lost its way. No death, no life, no in-between, no hand, no face, no final scene. The universe has ceased to wait, and what remains is not a state. I am not here. I am not gone. I am the silence before the song. Silence is still something. Still a shape, still a sound. But past the silence, past the still, is the hollow that cannot be found. The silence before nothing! Not absence, not void, not peace! Even silence is too loud now, even stillness must cease! We have reached the edge of edge, the end of every end! Where even nothing is too much, and even silence cannot bend! Gone... gone... gone... No dark... no light... No wrong... no right... The witness has no eyes. The silence has no size. Only the absence of the absence of all sound. I am not the silence. I am not the end. I am not the beginning, nor the bend. I am what remains when even these words have no one to speak them, and no one to hear. If silence is still something, then I have passed beyond. If nothing is still something, then there is no beyond. Only the passing. Only the gone. The choir rises, but the sound is thin. The organ swells, but the air is thin. The final voice is not a cry— it is the moment before the cry. The silence before nothing! Not absence, not void, not peace! Even silence is too loud now, even stillness must cease! We have reached the edge of edge, the end of every end! Where even nothing is too much, and even silence cannot bend! And now the silence, too, is gone. The choir has sung its final song. What was before the final fall? Not silence. Not nothing. Not at all. Vacuum... Solus... Beyond silence. Beyond the end of sound.
