Sunken Ship

Imagine a sunken ship. At one time, moving, filled with life, with people...wondering when they would get to port, what they will eat at dinner, if the weather would hold out. 

Now, years later, it lays quietly on the bottom of the sea. The light does not reach it, the sun has not touched its bow in so many years. No warmth finds it. Under enormous pressure, yet not exploding.  

A few fish swim by it and pay it no mind. It is simply something to swim around, or perhaps, something that holds algae to eat. The sand that cradles it lies miles below the surface, the only existence it has ever known, complete, black, endless darkness.

The sailors are no more. Their bodies long gone. No grave to remember them.  Their wives left behind. Their children, grown, moved on.  Their grandchildren only knowing stories. The memories of them creak like the opening of old, rusty trunk.

It is quiet. The earth turns, yet life below the surface is unaware. The only changes are the direction of the ocean current. And time passes. Life happens, but not here. 

It is quiet. It is forgotten.

I look into the eyes of people sometimes, and I see this lonely ocean of a soul that has that same feel. 

They are the forgotten. 

 The world turns, time moves forward, people walk by, and they are just an inconvenient obstacle to step around. The hunger pains, whether a hunger for food or for love, the only sound they hear. The pressures of life weigh down on them so heavy and they wonder if they exploded, would anyone even notice? If they never took another breath, would it matter to any other living being? If a tear fell, would anyone wipe it away? The suits walk past, the purse drops a religious tract, yet if that person can barely see them, how could God? 

And that tear falls. 

But they are invisible. No worth to anyone, they feel. They die in the cold, they starve beside a restaurant, they blow their brains out sitting outside a church. And who cares? 

Sometimes it is that person that works beside us, smiling because it is expected of them, not because they feel any joy, that is one of the invisible people. We see only their cloak, not the real person. If we looked deep in their eyes, we would see loneliness, fear, and pain and the wish to end the hurt.

Yet if we looked through the right eyes, the eyes of love, maybe their face would take on a familiar appearance and we would recognize that inside them, this person who felt they had no worth to anyone in the world, mattered to someone else.....

And they should matter to me.