In The Dim Light

In the dim, fractionated light of the sunrise, the fourth world was visible.
It was often she found herself outdoors as the darkness faded, as black and the glitter of other places seeped away, her ability to watch them slowly absorbed by the coming fireball and blue tinged ceiling overhead.  Night after night, season after season, she gravitated to the small patch of weeds outdoors, unable to fight the body’s urge for the night air, for the cool breeze which would come in from the ocean, usually full of moisture and the scent of deep amphibian life and the waxy plants that lived in salt water.  She could not resist keeping her mouth open, tasting the elements that had traveled far, changing their form to accommodate new modes of travel, mutating from water to air.
The night was delicious, alive with life unseen to the mass of sleepers. There was something about the pattern of the moon crawlers, carried out undercover, with only a sliver of light and stars. The shadows calmed her, they hid the vulgarity of her movements, muted the body so only the most obvious of forms was apparent, though there was no one to hide from, no one was there, no one was watching.
She swung alone in the hammock strung between two rusted poles, each of which were buried deep in the earth and surrounded by patches of clover and a few sparse clumps of struggling small-faced violets which released their perfume with sensual abandon.
The night was her time to rest, not as most people did, warm in their beds, tucked into the rooms of four walls and closed doors. But she did not sleep so much as sink into a trance. She never lost consciousness. As time moved, flowers opened and closed, she was aware of herself and the sensations upon her arms as the planet shifted and dawn approached, the bitterness of moonlit breezes, the nocturnal insects which sometimes landed on her cheeks and hands. The trance drew her awareness to the gentle swing of the ratty hammock, the cocoon like swath of the nylon mesh as it hugged her body, rocking her like a mother’s arms.
She was out there, wild. The night not hers, but she was the night, her presence affecting it as all attention does. The darkness was the companion who had no words of love, no scolding, it was presence and presence only.  It was movement, contact flow- neither caring for her or in any way disapproving. It moved with her or without. And in her trances, she felt it all. The path of the moonlight as it traveled over and by, the birds, the waves so far in the distance that they became just a whisper.

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.