The light in my living room is dim, and I've somehow lost my muse. I feel its absence, even though I never even understood it. Now I'm here, writing on any old piece of paper I can find desperate for an idea I can put to paper, and my mother sitting on an ancient chair, her thin hands kneading what is to be out dinner.

I'm searching for something, not just my muse. I feel empty without this something. Just suddenly I woke up one morning, and I've been searching ever since. I'm sure that my mother's searching for something too; she looks lost, like I know I do.

I was once full of life, now I have a gaping emptiness in my soul and mind that casts doubt on everyone and everything. I fear it. I think my mother has it too.

I look up and smile at her busy form, rolling pasta methodically. Her once young supple form is sagging, like an overripe banana without its peel. Her face is thinner, older, drawn, yet she'll always be beautiful; she has a timeless innocence. She glances up at me and mock-scowls, calls me 'sweet-heart', then smiles and returns to her task.

I look past her at the tree outside, beyond the balcony. It sways gently, leaves whispering. It reminds me of the ladies of the court, you know from the times of the Kings and Queens. Beautiful, graceful, well-mannered, sweet, fake. Trees symbolise life, this is my life. Well maybe it's not so fake, but its empty, and it feels like it.

Life breezes by, it doesn't wait for you. Sometimes you can get lost in it, I should know, I am. I want to scream out, demand for life to stop by, but it won't. I wake-up and go to school, I come home and do my homework, I eat my dinner a go to bed. In all that I do, where am I? Do you see now? My soul doesn't exist, it got lost.

I was going to grow-up, become a great pianist, famous, rich, happy. I was going to buy my mommy a car, a Mercedes-Benz, a huge mansion, with servants. We were going to live forever, but what? But life left us. He moved on, without us. A rusty old red Mitsubishi is my mother's Mercedes, and a four room unit at one hundred and forty dollars a week is her mansion. Life isn't fair. When it moves, you gotta move with it, or, you get lost in it.

I think I know what I've been searching for, and now I wish that I didn't, because then at least I was searching, now, I know I'll never find it.

I'm searching for life.