**Desperado**

He was an older fellow; his eyes peered intensely from the depths of unimaginable worldly experiences. His slightly wrinkled sun-aged skin stretched taught across his stern but magnanimous face only exaggerated the piercing gaze of a man having seen things that would haunt a more timid individual eternally.

He was tall in stature, but not menacingly so. A heavy sense of death oozed from his aura, permeating the surrounding atmosphere. This dark energy, conversely, harbored a deep sense of compassion, righteousness, and an unconditional love ever realized by only the few; as the ones who come closest to death are the ones that truly know life. For his understanding that life and death are both one in the same, he was granted the full unrelenting power and knowledge of the divine. The power of pure consciousness; infinite intelligence.

He was always a quiet reserved child. He never quite understood it, but all he ever wanted was to be with the peace and stillness of the divine. He would stare across passive, undisturbed ponds on warm spring days breathing deep the fresh vegetation and slight hint of algae as the cool eastern breeze softly caressed his youthful skin. As he would sit in a state of observance and complete non-judgement he would unknowingly become the serenity he perceived.

It wasn't until his adolescent years that his reality would be disrupted in syncopated tragedy by the very divinity he cherished so dearly. Year after year he seemed to be thrust into a plethora of unrelenting, horrifying, soul-staining situations. He would cry out to the divine in the height of the night at the peak of its darkness, when is was most still; the place he was most at peace, but to no avail. She would never respond... He just couldn't comprehend why she would let such anguish and turmoil plague his meager existence.

As he jumped from hoop to hoop, from frying pan to fire he began to grow. With each instance of despair he underwent an internal transitioning. He got faster, quicker, stronger, smarter. For every hurdle he jumped, every life he defended, every soul he protected, he would experience brief stints of bliss; fleeting moments in which he would fall deep into trance, much like the ones he'd experienced at the pond all those years ago. And, in these sporadic states he would find her once again. Just as a proud parent coaxing their toddler to take their first steps, these inner exhibitions of bliss would continue to guide him to her, until eventually he'd fall victim to circumstances so hairy, so vengeful, so malefic that he'd have no other alternative but to leap with full conviction into the open arms of death...

But, only to reemerge unscathed.

And, it was at that moment that he realized that our deepest realizations of love reside in our darkest moments of despair. This revelation illuminated portions of his psyche that showed him all the years when death entered the room, she was always there. Every dark night when his heart would cry out in dreadful agony through the blinding cover of darkness, she was always there. He could finally see that these circumstances were only the fires of her wisdom manifested through trials and tribulations to mould him into a righteous ambassador of the divine. This starkly benevolent specimen of a human being could only be engineered through the gradual increase of the encumbering grace of her divinity.

The collaboration of his life's experiences had been an existential blossoming of the soul; an evolution of the spirit. He realized that so many others in the darkness had given their lives so that he may find the light; so that he may function as an extension of her grace by being the light in the darkness of others so that they may find theirs.

In the dead of night, through the dark night of the soul, from the divine bludgeoning of circumstance, an unconditional love was born.

Desperado...