a ticket to nowhere

That sound, rhythmic and insistent like an inquisitor's interrogation, long ago became my inner metronome, beating the beat not of prayer but of decay. A drop. Silence. A drop. The faucet of the washroom at the end of the corridor, broken maybe since the spring, during the dead of night drove a nail into the coffin of infinity, into that God-given ocean, which the brothers so persistently tried to contain in a bucket full of reproaches and dogmas. They thought they would keep the heat in by closing the windows, but the rooms only smelled of mold and unfulfilled prayers.

Their anger coming from beyond the door was not holy. It was only masonry mortar hastily applied to the gaping holes in the walls with which they had fenced themselves off. I heard them whispering—conceit, weakness, temptations of the devil. Every word is a stone, not intended to build a cathedral, but to throw at the one who dared to raise his eyes and see that the sky is not limited to the frames of stained glass. For me, the flower is not their judgment, but the existential weariness born of the realization that they so fiercely defend the walls of their prison as if it were their greatest value.

The door closed. However, they were not the real border. The real wall was fear, and thought, now on the other side of it, timidly explored a new, boundless space, like a bird that had just left its cage for the first time.

Behind the door - the voices of the brothers. Difficult, reprehensible. let I'm leaving.

At the bus stop, under an overcast, indifferent sky, three more souls were waiting, huddled against the wind. No one looked at me. No one cared about the monastery I left behind or the infinity I discovered. The bus approached slowly, lazily, and I realized that my great escape was just buying a ticket. A ticket to nowhere that is everywhere.