There's a sparkle in your eyes that twinkles so brightly I want to compare it to the stars in the sky, to nova's and galaxies far away. But these worn words have lost their strength in repetition. Instead, I will search for the words that cause that shine. I will do anything to keep you looking at me that way.
I can only scream my feelings through the open window of a moving car
When the wind steals the words from my lips and smothers them before they can be heard
I was wrong. The clouds are moving. Only slower than me.
They've cleared the other side of the trees now.
And when I can breathe again, so will I.
It's sun down now. The early stages of it, where the sky is still full of light and color. The clouds are thick an mountinous. And completely still in the sky.
The big lumbering breaths are blushed pink around the edges. Deep scores of grey over every curve and crevice. Dense and almost palpable.
It looks like a painted back drop.
And I have no where else to look.
"Haven't you ever seen it?" She asked me.
"Gnarled roots pale as bone crawling their way through the underbrush. Pushing aside new green ferns and beds of decaying leaves. Each root peaking for long lengths from the damp dirt. Anchored maybe by the earth or maybe by thorny vines, sharp and thick with red-tipped spines. This is the work of the trees." She whispers this all to me in a conspiring way.
"You'll see them reaching with knothole fists towards the waters edge. Thirsty for what the spring has to offer; as if the ground isn't soft with it already." She pauses smile turned sharp and condescending in the way a mother's does when sharing stories of her child's mischief.
"Greedy things"
That sobering moment when you are brushed by death. Only by proxy; a tragedy twice removed.
But you see different, taste different, feel different.
Confronted by the fragile state that is humanity. When death is more than just mortality and morbidity.
Floating without even grief to hold your heart. Unbroken and unsure.
They told us to aim for the stars, that even our failures would be rich.
They didn't tell us that in exchange our victories would feel cheap and lifeless.
I have to fail to feel.
Long ago I accepted that my mind would always outrun my body. It would be an exhausting existence but one I could ultimately cope with. I spent all of my youth studying for it, how to live with my own mind. How to make room for it in my life. I looked it in its wild eyes as it promised it would never be tamed. And that was fine. I swallowed my dread determined to live anyways. To perservere.
I was unprepared for my body to start lagging further behind. I should still be young. Barely an adult. But my body is degrading around me nonetheless My joints creak and ache, my muscles fall slack and weak. I can't carry the weight I could before. I cannot hold a knife correctly to cut my vegetables, I can't even muser up enough strength to stand throughout the day. Always having to stop and catch my breath.
My mind is only getting faster and more unruly as it grows but my body is quickly becoming infirm. I worry the two halves of my existence will pull me apart refusing to live together.
What will become of me when I am abandoned by both?
in other words, the chaos that paves the path from birth till death
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