Quiver. Just a tiny little movement. Almost invisible, if you hadn’t been so precisely watching. As it is, you were. A thin quick breath, a sudden fluttering of rested snow, the contour of a jawbone.
Ten days ago you were wide-eyed and smiling, sitting at a restaurant table or walking in the park or swimming in the sea. You were gaily chatting and voraciously smiling, being engaged and engaging and drinking in the all the heady goldenness of existence.
You had a home, a job, the requisite stock of material belongings. You had a family and some really nice friends and a dog that loved you like dogs are supposed to do. You woke up, went to sleep, lived, breathed and sometimes, when you were lucky, were loved.
And then the other came along. Fresh and new and so inviting. So unique in their otherness that you couldn’t resist. Eyes like arctic pools that sometimes seemed to focus only on you. Moments of bliss where you forgot all of the things you were supposed to remember. A smile doled out in precise, calculated quantities. A crack opened, just enough to see in but not enough to fit through.
Light shone through, blindingly beautiful. The beams caught your heart and twisted it, tight and tighter. Compressing you until you couldn’t see what was ahead any more than you could remember what was behind. The things that were you began to shrink and shrivel and tear away, skin from muscle from bone, everything to dust. You breathed in the dust and it all started again.
Meanwhile the other sat drinking in your exhaustion. Feeding nimbly off your disintegration. Not out of malice but rather of an unknowing impulse, an innate reaction. Inbred or inborn, it doesn’t really matter. Until there was nothing left but a shell or a sketch or a tiny speck of dust sparkling in the sunlight.
And then you sank. Poured into the grass, softly crumbing piece by piece by piece. Returning to the earth, down with the ants and the grubs and the dark quiet dampness of relief. Breathed one long, still breath and settled in to hibernate. Lay still as the leaves fell and the wind blew and the inevitable snow began to fall. A silvery blanket rendered everything indistinguishable. Homogenized the landscape so you melted incongruously into the background. Became invisible.
And now you see, a tiny fluttering of snow, a thin little movement, and realize it is just the wind rustling the laid flakes. That it is too late. That there is no turning back. That you are gone.
Ten days ago you were wide-eyed and smiling, sitting at a restaurant table or walking in the park or swimming in the sea. You were gaily chatting and voraciously smiling, being engaged and engaging and drinking in the all the heady goldenness of existence.
You had a home, a job, the requisite stock of material belongings. You had a family and some really nice friends and a dog that loved you like dogs are supposed to do. You woke up, went to sleep, lived, breathed and sometimes, when you were lucky, were loved.
And then the other came along. Fresh and new and so inviting. So unique in their otherness that you couldn’t resist. Eyes like arctic pools that sometimes seemed to focus only on you. Moments of bliss where you forgot all of the things you were supposed to remember. A smile doled out in precise, calculated quantities. A crack opened, just enough to see in but not enough to fit through.
Light shone through, blindingly beautiful. The beams caught your heart and twisted it, tight and tighter. Compressing you until you couldn’t see what was ahead any more than you could remember what was behind. The things that were you began to shrink and shrivel and tear away, skin from muscle from bone, everything to dust. You breathed in the dust and it all started again.
Meanwhile the other sat drinking in your exhaustion. Feeding nimbly off your disintegration. Not out of malice but rather of an unknowing impulse, an innate reaction. Inbred or inborn, it doesn’t really matter. Until there was nothing left but a shell or a sketch or a tiny speck of dust sparkling in the sunlight.
And then you sank. Poured into the grass, softly crumbing piece by piece by piece. Returning to the earth, down with the ants and the grubs and the dark quiet dampness of relief. Breathed one long, still breath and settled in to hibernate. Lay still as the leaves fell and the wind blew and the inevitable snow began to fall. A silvery blanket rendered everything indistinguishable. Homogenized the landscape so you melted incongruously into the background. Became invisible.
And now you see, a tiny fluttering of snow, a thin little movement, and realize it is just the wind rustling the laid flakes. That it is too late. That there is no turning back. That you are gone.
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