When will the pain end?

It’s a question he hears much too often with no way to qualify the answer. The problem with hearing prayers is not the futility of trying answer all of them; the issue lies in the not knowing what the prayer pertains to.

He rolls in his bed, the wall to his left taking up his vision now. He can’t stare at the ceiling anymore while he wonders why.

(Jacob has his own short-form questions too. Things like, Why don’t you take this one, God? God, are you real? Then, in the silence of most nights as the prayers started phasing into his mind, this one was asked: Why me?

When they first started, Jacob would tell his mom about them and even write them down. He thought – with a child-like naivety – that is was a muse, his own imagination taking root.

By age twenty-three, he recognized the snippets of telepathic cries as what they were: prayers of a lonely species.)

He cries now; gently flowing tears that taste too familiar by now. Again, he wonders against closed eyes:

Why?