I know no one is listening.  I know that no one can hear me here in the dark.  Still my voice continues in this silence.  Or at least in my own head it does.

I feel the walls as they seem to move closer all around each and every day.  I so very rarely see the sun and when I do it burns my eyes.  The darkness grows and I can no longer tell the difference between day and night.

My muscles used to ache but I really cannot feel them anymore.  They no longer work and they no longer ache.  I do not know how I am able to move from place to place within the smallness of this cell.

I do feel my bones.  I feel bones where I never knew any existed.  They do ache and they do make sounds that seem to me so loud to me trapped here as I seem to be in this too-small and too-dark and too-lonesome a space.

I know what they want.  They want me to simply give up, to finally give in.  They want me to stay quiet, to toe the line, to bring to silence any who would follow.

Why didn’t they just simply kill me and get it over with?  Well, I can only think that they wish me to suffer, that they desire me to serve as an example to others who would follow.

There is precious little time to pen this note before I am again confined to total silence and complete darkness.  I wish that a message from me might work to inspire those still awake who might be moved to action but I fear I have few words to so move those who remain.  I fear that nothing I might communicate would matter much anymore.  In the darkness my voice is silenced.

I feel the tear, the single tear, for that is all that I can produce in here, as it rolls so slowly down my face.  I might feel its sting if I could feel anything any longer.  I had such belief that I could make a difference, that there would be those who might be persuaded to rally to the cause but they never came.  They never came.  And now I am left alone here in this tomb, left to die and then rot away with everything I once believed in.

I wonder what happened to my children after they were taken from us.  I wonder what happened to my wife after our children were taken, after I was then later taken as well.  What happened to my wife and what happened to my life?

What happened to all that we were and all that we might become?

There was silence then and it merely grows stronger now as it surrounds and devours me.  Here alone.  Here in this tomb.  My tomb.

In my silence I know that they have won; I know that they have prevailed.  I know that I have failed and that all we stood for is now lost to time with so much else over the centuries.  Gone.

In my darkness I know that I have lost and that all that was attached to me is lost.  Gone.

Yet, somehow, somehow there remains a trace of what I once was.  Somewhere deep inside, in a place that is not yet still completely quieted or completely darkened, there still exists barely a spirit that will not die before me.  It awaits my imminent passing.

I suppose it is that small trace that they are still after..