Hardly a Beginning

Hardly a Beginning                                                            By HLFÅS

She wanted to be seen as who she knew herself to be, not what she appeared to be.

Yes, she had plastic tubes running through her evacuated frame. Toothless. Gums bleeding, lips folding in on themselves. Only a fraction of her internal organs were left inside her decaying skin- case, most were forced to function on the outside in bags and pumps; artificially gasping for life.

But she knew who she was.

She was sensitive. Empathic. Gifted. Smart. Trusting. Musical. Terrified. Brave. Disappointed. Angry. Loving. Nails. Victimized. Iron.

She saw beyond the illness for herself.

She played music, when her fingers refused to play the way her brain electronics were ordering them to.

She sang, when her voice wavered uncontrollably and her throat muscles atrophied, creating the wailing sound of a wounded animal.

She wrote what she needed to say, though she was swamped with in-communicable pain.

She laughed through the tidal wave of agony stunning those she knew into tears.

Her ghostly space beside me is a tangibly rough and jagged vacancy. And after so many years, it is largely a longing melancholy that finds its way to me. A dulled version of the initial shock.

I catch myself thinking in long distances and rabbit holes. The hurt has crushed itself into something different. Now it just feels…stretched beyond.

She was a brilliant collection of human organs and spirit. Her earthly meat form, too weak for the rest of her, collapsed under the weight of her spiritual potential.

All that in one person would have gifted us magic, dammit.

I gaze off, out into nothing, down another cavernous rabbit hole and numbingly imagine she knew. I repeat to her faded image and the combination of her faces through the years, that though we barely knew her, we saw her. I pray she knew.

I dunno…

31 years was hardly a beginning.

  The End.