The Pessimist

This life

These loves

These laughs

This wandering emptiness

This hopeless contentment

These expected words

These unexpected successes

Those predictable, and sudden, failures

This weight

This Imbalance posing as equilibrium

This knowledge of time and its hand on our backs

This life

This cursed life

The Sensitive

They always told him the curse would arrive suddenly. A midnight shudder. An omen. A shadow slipping beneath the door just before sleep stole the day. But, when it finally came, he realised it had been with him all along. It had simply been stitched into the fabric that made up those quiet moments he'd mistaken for existence.

It showed itself in small ways. Discreet, and only noticeable if he wasn't looking for them. The way joy didn't stay with him long enough to provide warmth. The way his successes, few though they were, dissolved on his touch. The way laughter was never contagious. Never reached inside him. Once recognised, those things became a weight between his ribs.

It was called a gift, but that's only because no one wanted to admit the truth.

He tried to outrun it, once. Can you outrun fate, though? Does it find you in the end, or is it ever with you, like your shadow on a sunny day, and the darkness behind your eyes at night? He tried a new town, with a new job. A new love.

But the 'gift' travelled light. There was no need of a suitcase when it lived in your breath and leaked out in your sweat.

One evening, sitting alone in a cafe, he looked out at the street, through the steam from his second flat white. The cafe was small, and smelled of coffee and cake, an aroma that made some salivate. To him, it was bitter in odour and taste. He asked himself the question he'd always avoided.

"What exactly is this curse?"

Call it what it was, not what it wanted to be.

The answer arrived as a simple realisation. So simple, it felt cruel.

The curse is that you feel it all, while others ignore or are oblivious. The curse is that you keep going anyway.

He looked out at the street. People were laughing. Arguing. Rushing and ambling. And he understood. They were cursed too. Every one of them. Life had touched them, marked them, demanded they carry its burden and its wonder in equal measure. They just didn't care – or they accepted it unknowingly.

He exhaled, long and slow, dissipating the steam as he wished he could his worries.

Maybe the curse wasn't meant to be broken. Maybe it was only meant to be known. Named.

It was Life.

And for the first time, it felt like a kind of freedom.