Behind The Glaze

1.
The sedentary palms give way in my mind. The fronds graze each other stilling the world on this side of the glaze. The waves as still as the palms roll in churning up the sugary sand beneath. I reluctantly pull my focus outward and painfully remind myself again of the glass before it. The frame. The illusion. A physical expression of what we attempt to live behind. But truth doesn't live within the boundaries of any man-made frame or sheet of glass. I pull my focus deeper outward and am reminded nature doesn’t conform to human will, wishes or dreams as I try to find my footing among the rubble.

We were painters, vainly painting ourselves behind the glazing's of nature's selfless artistry. We had many colors on our pallete, nature the infinite supplier it seemed. She let us blot the canvas as we pleased at both her expense and ours, mostly ours. I look around the room trying to remember how long it’s been since I’ve seen a green or a blue. God, a red. I look at my hands and all I see is gray, my peripherals always drowning in it. Grey the same color as the wall my escape hangs on. Nothing grows, nothing lives, even those who remain mortal are long dead, a slow and unwitting suicide. Staring down the barrel but never seeing it. We murdered the world because we were too busy loving ourselves and the irony that we are unable to die is as poetic a justice as I know. We are the walking dead roaming the carcass of our once loving home.

2.
I sink back into the world around me as I look to the last remaining bit of beauty I know, even the chalky dust that covers her skin can't hide it. "Are you okay?"* Her voice soft and smooth she steps closer to me and holds out her hand. I look at her and smile with unparted lips as she fingers her hair behind her left ear, her wedding band missing its diamond. "Let's go", she says in a soft and unrushed whisper smiling with her eyes as only she can. I take her hand as she turns and leads me among the debris and remnants of a long-lost life through the door frame of where my office door once stood and past the fireplace and the bedroom where we used to make love back when the world was green and our hope ran wild. As I look at her long dark hair as she leads me out of the house, she stays focused on the debris strewn floor. She didn't want to come here and it wasn't right of me to bring her. I thought maybe if I brought her, well, I don't know what I thought. Maybe I stopped thinking long ago.

* I've been told this dialogue intro is jolting.