Lives

Members of my family, we don’t die. We just change.

I wish sometimes that we could. There are times that I’m so hungry and tired and disappointed that I would welcome the rest. Eternal sleep. In those moments, I don’t even care for an afterlife. I’ve had enough.

Other times, not. Other times I miss the ones I’ve lost and hope to one day, somehow, see them again.

This body is old now and creaks more than the ancient oak that lives outside our door. I am thin and tough like old jerky chewed for far too long. It’s past time for a change but I’ve been clinging onto this life, nails dug in.

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I make my way out back, up the hill to where you are buried but I can’t quite make it in one go. I sit on the bench you built nearby. I told you once about this habit my family has, but who would believe it? I expect, wherever you are, you might be waiting for me. It will be a terribly long wait.

Our life together was simple and good, and we were content. We loved each other. There isn’t much more to ask than that. We did the best we could.

————

It is warm today. The first warm day of spring. I stand back up and finish the journey. I lie down on the earth above you. Six feet to separate us but we know it’s so much more than that. I curl as much as my tired body will allow and let go of these old bones. I feel my heart slow and I sleep.

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I dream. I see Romeo and Mercutio arguing about how dreamers often lie. I see Queen Mab in her shell carriage pulled by her team of atomies. She shows me you as you were when we met. Strong and handsome and I, soft with youth.

She shows me our lives. Evenings spent reading by the fire and passionate fights over the nothingness of everyday life. I miss even those. A thousand good moments that were, in the end, eclipsed by one terrible one, over twenty years ago now.

She has me watch you die. It is fast, a stroke I suppose. One moment there and the next gone. In my mild lucidity, I expect the dream to end here because where else could it to go? But it doesn’t end.

I see your shade, watching me try to wake you up. I feel your heart breaking and I see an entity, like Hermes, appear to ferry you away. I see the request you made and the acquiescence of a fickle universe that sometimes chooses miracles.

I see you born again, a screaming infant on a farm nearby. I see small snatches of you growing up. I see you as you are now, grown, and the moment that the memories of our life together slam into your mind like a steam engine.

I am angry at myself for the hope I begin to feel. This is only a dream and soon I will wake, young again, but still terribly alone. I will get up from the ground and I will move on and try to live another life as best I can. Hale and heartsick.

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I wake and stretch and enjoy the pure pleasure of a body that moves the way that it should. I run my fingertips over my face now clear of wrinkles. I feel like a thief of time. For a reason I cannot name, I’m afraid to open my eyes. I feel the earth still, beneath my body, and the sun above, warming me.

I could stay like this for hours, just resting, but for you.

You clear your throat and my eyes snap open and I sit up so fast that I’m dizzy.

You are really there, standing with your hat held in your hands in front of you. I stare and you stare back.

I get up slowly and you keep your eyes on me in the same considering way that you had done the first time we met.

I want to ask a thousand questions. I want to understand why this time, why this life do I get to keep someone I love, and how did this happen and what do we owe and will I lose you forever after this?



————



He always said that he could see all my thoughts written clearly on my face. (Living so many lives has not granted me the gift of subterfuge.)

He sees the riot of questions then upon my face and smiles and shakes his head and says, “I don’t know,” as an answer to all my questions. Then he starts to laugh and so do I, at the pure simple joy of the two of us, here, together again.

I shake one of his hands loose from his hat and we walk down the hill and back to the house hand in hand. Time enough to find the answers to all the questions later. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us.

Prompt ▼

In Tarot the number 21 is related to the "The World" card. One of the many meanings of this card is that it represents an ending to a cycle of life, a pause in life before the next big cycle.

Write your STORY or POEM about someone who is experiencing the end of one cycle of life just before the next cycle begins. It could be going from single to married (or married to divorced); graduation; changing jobs; moving; retirement, etc. Be creative, and you must use Inspirational as one of your genres.

Author's Note ▼

I know there's a perspective shift at the end there and I don't know if that will be too jarring or not. I figured at that point, she no longer needs to talk to him directly in her head. She can just talk to him in the real world now.

Also, it seems that as I'm going through my own collapse of a 17-year marriage, I keep writing weirdly romantic and mildly hopeful things. If that's even what this is. . . *shrug*