It is these

It is when you wake up in the middle of the night and look out the window, only to find out that the stars have decided not to shine for you anymore.

It is when your one passenger leaves: she unfastens her seat belt, steps out of the car, taps on your window, waves goodbye, and fades away into the darkness, leaving you as the lone target of all the air-conditioning vents, spewing the frost of solitude at your face, your hands, and your heart.

It is your bed, staying unmade from morning until night and back again, because you are too occupied with the thoughts of waking up and falling asleep.

It is the unfortunate morning: you wake up, yet you are unable to face the coming sun and the day that it brings, the mere thoughts of these forcing your body into a sickly shiver which forces you to fold your blankets back onto yourself once more.

It is a plan: how it is made, and how it, sooner or later, falls apart in the face of the fickleness of human nature, which no plan, however how painstakingly crafted, can account for.

It is being left out in the rain: the water pelts you with sharp little slivers of cold, penetrating skin that only wanted the touch of another's fingers and a few whispered words of comfort, nothing more.

It is the night, and man's fight to suppress it, to turn it into a time for sleep and idleness, in its attempt to ostracize the vampires, the lunatics, the lycanthropes, and all the other nocturnal spirits on this earth.

It is sanity: hanging by a single, fragile thread, one that can only be strengthened by the immoral fibers we call vices, excesses, dares (as opposed to truths) and sabbaticals.

It is purpose, and its faltering: how quickly men stray from one god to another, testing, teasing, tasting, as if faith was a currency one could budget on one or more items at a time.

It is life: so much, as the old saying goes, like the arc in a wheel, up one moment and down the next, following the statistics of circumstance, which state that the only way from the top is downward, either straight or spiraling.

It is destiny, and the thought of what there is to aspire for in this wretchedly monotonous, yet unchanging state of things.