She Knew a Lovely Lake

Everything that can hurt is chronic in an old body. An arrow through the heart is acute, a bullet in the knee is an in-the-moment pain that lasts a lifetime, however, a chronic chronicity is the real killer. She had had enough. Windows held nothing for her. Food tasted like burnt paper, breathing a grating torture. She once knew a lovely lake, one she had swam upon as free as a fish. A lover or would-be lover waved her to come ashore but she would linger in the lake letting the waters caress her in parts that hands could never reach. It takes forever just to rise and sit at the edge of the bed, Bones rasp on bones, hot wires thread joints. At last she looks over the side of the mattress into that blue clear lake again. She could dive now, she thinks, dive headlong, swan dive and never return to the surface. In that moment, a mercy arrives; a dragging grudge of infirmity becomes a soul-deep-daggering, swampy tumors long moldering in the indolent mouth of a remorseless beast burst into devouring bonfires flares that ram her into the unbearable. With a scream of joy she dives weightless into sweet and obliviating waters shedding years of drought, and far from the maul and clank of indifferent time. ~~~~~