Flash fiction (23): To fading

I wrote this today for JD Mader’s writing site. If you fancy writing some flash fiction or poetry, and getting/giving feedback, or just reading other people’s creations, head over to JD Mader’s 2minutesgo website. It’s a great place to go and write whatever is in your head. Cheers.

To fading

I give you nothing in the eyes of this sacred summer; a cold distancing you need to get you through this night. It will breathe, the truth, resurrect you in a blink, deliver you from the evil you bang on about. Yet you love it so, inhaling its dank breath; relishing this reality, this true relationship, the deepest one you’ve ever shared with another – behold, the biggest loss you’ll feel when claws wrench it away.

I watch you. Like a child you sleep, breathing the nether, the empty, a time of bliss and quiet, and still, so still. A sculpture, palest cheeks carved into the pillow. I’m scarcely aware that you exhale. Do you? Are you real? I sometimes wonder.

The way you tilt your chin and look at me in that way you have when you think I’m not seeing you, it makes me weary now. Weary of tomorrow. If only you could stay like this, simple, away from the world you find so difficult to trudge through. It starves you of what you need. You never tire of telling me this. Reminding me. Informing me why the creative inside of you is dead.

They killed it, you say. And sometimes you cry. But you know I can’t bear to see a man cry. Your endless desire for empathy is a drowning. You would have steered me away from you, dragged me across a lake, pretending you could walk on water. And now you disintegrate into dreamtime, the only safe crossing for you.

What if you don’t wake up? What if you just stop? What if? This second is the longest and I keep the door ajar for you, waiting. Outside an owl sounds and I know it echoes here for you.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, July 6, 2019

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