Pain's Spark

This is something I wrote after eavesdropping on a coversation about Stacey K. Black's screenblack.

Q-“How do you know that someone is in pain just by looking into their eyes?”

A-“You might think that when you look into the eyes of someone who is in pain you would see nothing, just an empty darkness in a space where all light has been extinguished by this evil life. But that’s not true because where there’s pain there’s actually hope. Without the hope it wouldn’t hurt anymore. Pain is the consequence of hope during times when your dreams won’t come true.

So when you look into the eyes of pain, what you actually see is that spark of hope. A fragile floating ember, blowing on the wind, just waiting to touch down someplace where there is something, anything, that might be ignited if fanned by even the slightest breath of love or goodness.

So that’s how I know…I see that spark.”