For all sad words on tongue or pen, the saddest are these: "It might have been."

However, what happens when the shroud of darkness permanently veils our vision of the shimmering ocean of joy? Does the man, once proud and tall, duck and cower at the face of blindness? Alternatively, does he, instead, appeal to his own Genius and break free of the black bonds that bestow upon him the brand of `submissive'.

Either of the choices is open to him, each leading him through a murky forest of uncertainties, dangers and end-points. This journey becomes the fuel of the man's own intellect, and his Self is propelled by this journey through the forest. (Very few men or women have "nothing" written under their "Best Intellectual Quality" of their résumé.) Thus their opening, their only window to the worlds, becomes their saviour during their time of distress.

For a certain sect of them, writing becomes an obsession; a singular fetish to write becomes an engine, surviving due to the only thing that is killing them. They Write. Stories, poems, and lyrics pour out of their inflamed minds, and become a reflection of their own visages; contorted with pain and mortified with the angst within. The veneer of (and by) torture blackens their outlook on life; yet as Warriors of Light they transform their own writing to sear through the mantle that chains their figure to the ground. These sad, painful words, disguised as ebon arrows, reveal themselves as the multicoloured shafts of light that they are... to the truest Seekers. But what happens, when without so much so as a mere whisper, these valiant attempts seep away from their existence?

The verdict is Regret.

Regret carves into a person's flesh like a bullet through melting butter. The "worst form of defeat", as it has been rightly put. It swathes the Man's surroundings and he becomes invisible to the rest of the world. His condition is akin to a prisoner encased in a dungeon of oblivion. He cries himself hoarse and not even his echo reaches his ears. The worst form of insanity creeps unto him; which deploys itself as paranoia against everything he ever stood for, becoming a defiled pool in which his eyes do not see his own face, but the monster, which personifies his own. At this, he becomes a slave to those unseen captors, a definitive thrall who knows not his own words - immune to those few drops of wine he himself brewed and aged.

And those, who once knew his fire, who once knew what he was capable of and who once knew the mettle, view his condition - as a martyr of his skirmish through Life; or as the chained and whipped exhibit and wonder (with sadness profound) if this indeed was who they knew.

And they - his mentors, his friends, his loves see not what he did create before his final, decisive defeat. They can only see an untrue picture of the Man. How imposing and magnificent he might have been if he found the strength to deliver himself from his bondage. Their bland and passion-less words of sorrow overshadow his own conquests over his demons. They are forgotten in the calm after the fiery storm.

They just say what he might have been... or he, he slave, sees is own life and wonders at what he could have been. The sorrow that follows these wispy words can only be fathomed, not described.