The Last Five Senses '2
By~Krish
The wind arrived without warning
its cold fingers lifted him
like paper from my hands.
He dissolved,
like ink in water.
The tulips crumbled into ash
that danced away
before it could touch the ground.
The earth tilted beneath me
and I fell.
When my eyes opened,
I was somewhere else.
The sun was too bright,
its heat warped by a crowd
gathered in a trembling circle.
At their center,
a shape lay still
and dread gripped my ribs
like a closing fist.
I knew this scene.
I had dreamt it before.
I pushed through
each shoulder I passed
a wall between me and a truth
I didn’t want to know.
And then I saw him
broken,
half-breath,
half-gone,
lying in his own halo of blood.
My world collapsed
in the time it took my lungs to forget air.
The bones of my heart
splintered into dust.
Breath left me
as if it, too, could not bear to stay.
I dropped to the ground beside him,
my hand brushing his wrist.
And there it was
the bracelet I had given him
when our hands were still small enough
to be held in one palm.
The dark closed over me again
but this time it was endless.
And then
light.
He stood in its doorway,
one hand outstretched,
a quiet smile on his lips
as if he had been waiting for centuries.
The path behind him
was a ribbon of stardust,
a bridge to somewhere
the living cannot name.
I reached for him.
Every fear,
every pain,
every year that had gnawed at me
melted away
as if grief had never been invented.
Far away,
the rhythm machine
cried its final note
a last heartbeat in a language only souls understand.
And together,
hand in hand,
we stepped into the constellation
where at last,
we were allowed to meet.
“The last heartbeat was only a doorway… leading me back to you.”
~Krishika
Copyright ©
Krishika Upadhyay
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