Chasing Fate

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I am drowning in night and in the burning folds of my husband’s flesh. I will myself to move, but my body is an unbroken horse that rears and flails when I reach for it. The darkness is coming together in splotches of color and I can see my horse’s breath streaming from its nostrils in finely threaded rainbows. I am afraid to blink because what if the light of my horse flits away and I’m alone again? I am afraid to speak because what if my husband wakes up and I’m alone again? The lights are dissembling now and spiraling into the wall and I can tell I am meant to follow them. Helpless to destiny, I shift from underneath my husband’s weight and he reaches out to pull me into his dreams. His fingers brush my hair but do not make contact at all and suddenly I know what it is to be a parallel line.

I stand up and smooth the covers to hide my malfeasance and then ruffle them to repent my compunction. The night grazes my naked body and I reel back at the touch of reality. Before I can even move, I am moving so fast it frightens me and I feel that I am young, rolling down the hills of home and grinding sweet dirt into the Sunday linen. My feet know the what and where of my life and I trust and love them to carry me. They fly across floorboards and carpet and all the other boundaries that keep nature from this house. The pure efficacy of my body awes me beyond anything and I feel that I am surrounded by the kind of assiduous gravity that only comes when one cries for it.

Now I am outside and the unnamed purpose that was shepherding me has vanished, leaving my trembling consciousness to be crushed by the utter size of everything. Goose bumps wax and wane to the currents of my body and the external heat is not enough to compensate for the internal cold. I turn in my weakness and look back at the fleeting promises of warmth and love. But the wind whips around my ankles impatiently, spinning me away from my sirens.

My velvet footfalls disturb the delicate air and a cacophony of trills and screeches vibrate through my bones as the bats whistle condemnation. I haven’t the heart or knowledge to defend my honor and instead walk the other way, small toe marks the only sign of my defeat. It is even worse because I am lying to myself by saying that the bats are no peers of mine and have no right to witness and judge and sentence. I know that their clicks and chirps bounce off my skintight secrets and sins. They see past and future and present and in-between in the black and white blurs only talented ears can distinguish. Maybe if they saw color, they would understand.

I feel a pariah now and I cannot comprehend why nefarious fate would play such a cruel trick on me. The friendly night has turned into colorless horror and my ragged footsteps match my pulse. Hiding my face from myself, I turn my back on freedom and run.