AN EXCERPT


" For it was not into my ear you whispered,
but into my heart...
It was not my lips you kissed,
but my soul..."



He surveyed her, touched her pulse & felt the pull of her presence weakening. Her thread, as she called it. She was leaving soon, he could feel it.
The air swirled around them, and as a doctor, he wanted to close the window but as a husband, he wanted to be that breeze, to be in those last precious lungfuls. She didn't feel overly cold as he touched her cheek, but regardless, he bowed over her, sheltering her from the chill.

He picked up her hand & held the ring he had slid onto her finger so many years ago. He softly twisted the ring, an old habit & felt her tremor under her skin. Feeling suddenly like his helpless, young naive self, terror gripped him. The life alone, before her, had prepared him for her. But nothing had prepared him for the life after her.

She had systematically stripped him off of his cardboard cut-out beliefs & had replaced them with something stronger, something bigger. He had learned more in those walks than he had in his entire education, his long career. She was his life's education.

He couldn't look at her now, this fading woman & think of her only as tissue & blood layered upon bones. 
She had taught him that nothing could alter the path of a soul & he could imagine the trail on which she would soon walk, away from him, away from the home that she loved so much. He imagined her, a little balloon, tied to him by a spider's silken thread, reaching towards the breeze, eager to float.

"My body lives without you," he whispered, "But the heart of me, all that I am, will go with you."

In that instant, he hated his mortal body, hated being chained to the ground, trapped & tied in that room. It seemed so unnatural that she should depart on her journey alone. As he rested his head over their joined hands, HE FELT THE LIGHT FADING, HE PRAYED, AT FIRST SILENTLY, BUT SOON THE WORDS FELL FROM HIS LIPS & WERE CAPTURED IN HIS TEARS.

He hadn't been in any temple, but his prayers were his own version of worship, her name, his love.... He prayed to find her again but it was her words, he consciously echoed as he braced himself, as he watched the spark fade, as he felt his own flame flicker,
"Walk back to me, someday."

He stood frozen in the most ancient & primal grief. The soft wind ruffled the curtains.
Gently, softly, the threads had been unravelled & she was spirited away from him, to float to the land where pain could not find her, where time could not limit her.
Back to the world with no walls...

"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal,
Love leaves a memory no one can steal."