Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Until The End

The law would not bend to her will.  She wished to reverse time, to stop decay in its path, to find the fountain.  Her bones were made of steel. The taste of metal lingered in her mouth; even after brushing her shiny teeth she could sense the elements and polished earth.
The years since her birth had flown like a blue feather on a hurricane gust. Childhood had at first been painfully slow, but the moment her breasts were upright and singing, the years gathered strength and momentum, rolling faster and faster until she came to the edge and her pulse slowed. She grew out her hair in an attempt to capture what had been.

Now, her white mane long and clean, her hair had become a symbol of the past, like some sort of guiding line attached to a place she could not quite remember. The girl that had been, she had never known her.
She had watched herself from a distance, seeing the movements and thoughts of a skinny girl from an outsider’s perspective. Her dancing and singing was put under scrutiny, not by all those teachers and fellow students, but by the loud voice in her own mind that beat its comments into an ever-present rhythm she confused with the body’s pulse.
Her hair was long now, longer than it had even been.  When naked she could feel the soft ends of her white waves rubbing against the back of her thighs. 

Sprouting life seemed to grow unabated just beyond her fingertips.  The tree outside the window, once a sapling she had planted with her own hands, had grown into a massive fruit bearing vine.  It had pushed its way through the cracks in the house foundation, had climbed up the interior wall in her bedroom and spread along the ceiling. 
There were flocks of bright colored birds perched along the ledges of her roof and in the garden. A once carefully tended plot of vegetables had exploded into a new life form.  The tentacles of squash plants covered the land, expanding outwards, resolutely mounting wooden fences in its path, winding its way over forgotten toys and sun-chairs in the neighbor’s yard. 

She wished she could bend that universal law into a pretzel, making time into a new shape so that she could experience it all again in a different way, perhaps with more clarity, perhaps with more wisdom.
She was old and her bones were metallic.  Little walks around the block towards the park sent sparks through her, sometimes igniting the dried up lawns beside the path.
If only the proliferation of vines and thick weeds and the sun could wait for her, could keep her in their company.  She would like to see it all to the end, every moment of existence before it all went up in a colossal puff of smoke. 
She swung her hips as best she could, leaving a trail of embers on the sidewalk.

No comments: