Whispers

The hardest fight
Is in the silence.
When the world is dark and quiet,
No stars,
No moon,
No songs
No voices of loved ones,
That’s the time of whispers.

The greatest enemy
Is the whisperer in the silent dark.
Each whisper
Is a tiny cut
From a sharp knife.
Each cut is barely felt,
Scarcely noticed,
But enough tiny cuts
Might drain a man dry
Before he knows he bleeds.

Give a man a raging storm and a ship to stand on
And he might well lash himself to the wheel
And sing as he sails into the teeth of it.
Alone,
Against a field of foes,
A man might set his face in a smile
And charge them all.

The whisperer in the dark is more clever than that.
“Why bother?”
Slice.
“It’s too hard.”
Slice.
“You could just quit now.”
Slice.
Cut.
Slash.

That game is a game of inches,
Of tiny compromises,
Of attrition.

I know a few things.
I’ll share two.

One:
The only way to truly lose is to quit.

Two:
Every long, dark, silent night eventually ends.

Hold on ‘til morning.