xenogere

Washout Lane :: But it would never be

Posted on Jan 4, 2007 by jason

I began writing this in March 2006.  What you see below represents the finality of what developed before it fell away and suffered a loss of focus.  I wish I could tell you where it wished to go, what path it felt destined to follow.  But I cannot.  I do know it grew from an allegory, a metaphor wishing to convey something . . . something I can no longer remember.  Shameful, I know.

It never had a proper title so I have given it one that fits what little exists.

She lay quietly wrapped in my shirt cradled gently in my arms, as a father would hold a child.  Staying my own trembles required more effort than I imagined existed in all the world, yet I prevailed.  No amount of weakness borne of anguish could overcome my desire to see her tended to.  I would not fail her.

Whispers of my love danced from my lips until they fell upon her ears in quiet so profound it beckoned the universe to hush so it might hear me.  My hands moved nimbly over her fur in strokes of passion deep and heartfelt.  Beneath my soft caress her body trembled slightly, weakly, a strain against my embrace in defiance of what was to come.  I knew no creature could survive such wounds; no body could withstand such damage.  I knew she was dying.

I leaned my face close to hers in that way I often did, and I gently spoke to her, halting abruptly only to listen as she feebly whimpered.  Her weakening breath softly caressed my face.  It was like a kiss to me and engendered a tear that fell just beyond her neck and landed on the tattered cloth of a shirt I would never wear again.  Briefly, my eyes fixated on the darkness it created there, a small and insignificant spot of salt water, and I stared at it absently.

Her trembles became weaker still and I shifted my focus back to her small face.  Eyes bright as stars on a moonless night stared back at me, a loving gaze that washed over my face and seemed to push the air out of the room.  I wanted to bathe in it, to wash my whole body in that scrutiny.  And yet I feared I would never see it outside the harshly lit room in which we stood.  Too much had happened; too many pains had befallen such a small soul.

Racked by guiltless longing for what could never be, I leaned ever closer to her face and kissed her gently through my own growing sobs.  She needn’t worry for me, needn’t add my own trepidation to her own, so I struggled against the lamentations welling up within my essence and denied them voice.  It had to be her time, her moment, her wisp of the cosmos defined in a sterile room tucked away in cheap offers of peace.  I would not fail her.

So I snuggled her closely and let her waning pants lick my cheeks, my nose, my lips in vast smallness only she could define.  Their flavor slipped from me, grew increasingly distant.  I wanted to take within my own flesh all the suffering and pain she felt.  Was there no offering I could make by which to trade my own life for hers?

As she slipped away, I inhaled her final essence, the last breathing from a suddenly lifeless body, and into me I took it with force and selfishness.  I would hold my breath for the rest of my life if it meant I could keep that part of her with me always.  Streams of sorrow marched down my cheeks and fell around her halo-lit countenance.  Letting her go was not an option.  I would rend my heart upon the same shirt in which she was wrapped, cast it upon the floor holding up my feet, and all if it meant just one more moment, one more cry, one more touch from a life taken too soon.  But it would never be.

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