Unrest for death

The dream stretched on and on. I never knew where it ended, for it didn't seem to. Eternity came and went and I just sat there and played. Lost with my toys and colours. There was no care. What I'd give to be back there.

The unrest for death is nothing compared to the vacuum, to the sense of loss, the bewilderment of her departure. A clean slate. With her gone, my whole family has disappeared. A gust of wind on the dust of time passing by in the hourglass that pulverizes everything. She was all I returned for. A slight kiss on the cheek, a little nap on her lap, inhaling her clean antique scent. I sometimes emerge from my restless sleep to bold nightmares and night terrors woven of loneliness and disillusions.

I find myself beating at her door, longing for her voice and the warmth of her embrace. The sweet illusion of being back in my childhood home to the faint beat of her ancient heart. She still whispers in my ear a reassurance, like when I was a child, but it is a pitiful lie. Everything passes and everything dissolves. People, things, love and hope.

A slow collapse

With the world on a lockdown, there is a lot of time to think; no time for socializing, nowhere to get a drink. Some, risking their lives at work with people dying at their feet, tucked away in body bags; wind heralding a thousand deaths and clinical suicides - every hour. Rounded up or down to a pleasingly symmetrical number. Prescription drugs, infomercials, images of families and foliage, and a pleasantly vapid disclaimer of collateral sufferings, followed by a drone shot to some unnamed music. Blue and white PPE Kits, everything smells of caustic chemicals; dogs chewing through their hair, for a morsel. Prisoners of our own making, of the horror, the invisible death, the stench of blood and sweat. All that talk of apocalypse sounds exquisite, flames twisting skywards, faces masked, as if some horrid holiday has commenced. Everyone’s in a mask, N95, blue, black, floral, abstract - endless designs, a pallid veil of dancing shadows, an impending demise. Is there a fury in the bleakness of the after-death, a separation beyond anxiety, hopelessness beyond the last farewell?

She asked - "Is this the end?”, and I said, “press your beautiful bones against my ribs, lay your mire upon my silt, as we stumble to a halt, tangle your rictus into my thinning hair and chew out a keepsake for the archeologists to carefully sweep a brush across someday. “ You laugh, and we leave it that.

Each morning we inch a bit closer to the bottom of the valley. Each morning becomes more arresting, and every evening we laugh ourselves to stupefaction, to an anthem of prerecorded applause as the news delivers a thousand clockwork deaths and suicides, an hour, a slow collapse.

The phone pings. Update! It is hard to see the pain in a selfie. Another smile in the sunshine pretending everything is 'fine'. Aren’t you getting sick of the grind? But we’ve all adjusted, shifted things. Persisting here day by day, the end of times delayed, yet again. Seems simplistic at first glance. Guess, it’s all up to chance.

Maybe the sun will eat the world today...