Animals instinctually live for themselves.  Humans mean to.  Staring at my hamster that one could debate is caged, I felt a pang in my stomach called greed.  Was this confinement an exploitation of her life?  Life: the greatest and most natural freedom.  All life is beautiful and all living contain an ever-developing curiosity.  Humans bring forth another element, a mutation, which is a deeper level of self awareness that clouds the senses.  To think, all of this thought sprouting prolifically from a being that I couldn’t even make eye contact with.

I found myself doing it again —consciously— this time the species was human.  He is my subject.  I’ve fooled myself into believing that he is “the one”.  Legs folded, he sits alone in front of the North Building of Hunter College.  His sneakers are weathered and muddied, as if he had tried to see and understand everything.  His head doesn’t move as his eyes scan text.  What does he know of life?  He’s just a child.  We’re all just children.  I don’t think we’ll ever get it right, like shooting stars, burning to be seen.  Right seems to be the wrong idea.

He pensively reads a dull, blue textbook.  I try to focus on him, but the wind is whispering it and I am enjoying every molecule of it.  It truly spikes the senses.  I stop staring, realizing that my pregnant mind has had a miscarriage again.  Finally, my eyes stop darting from print to person.  The chatter in my head is silenced, my sputtering thoughts coming to a solemn hum.

The reality is that because he is human he is imperfect.  I can see myself when I do more than attempt to look into him.  In this world there is always room for another draft.  Failure is a draft misunderstood; symmetry is imprinted in the mind as beauty.  In my dull, blue textbook, the blurry symbols say “Do what you ought, come what may.”  My hand limped and I let go.  There was nothing that I knew for certain, except that I needed to stop trying to live, and just breathe.  “Twas beauty that killed the beast.”