Some things end before they are finished.

A collaboration with EC (@erroneouschoices)

There are nights when the moon hangs low enough to feel borrowed. The fields hold their breath. I stood in the dark with dirt on my palms, roots beneath my boots, and the smell of turned earth rising into the cool air.  Somewhere beyond the tree line, something wild moved through the world, and for a moment it moved through me too. I almost turned to point it out before remembering there was no one standing beside me.  Most Sundays, she would have been.

I never really enjoyed evenings after a heavy rain. Always trying to step over or around something but still never failing to get my toes wet. I bent down under the light of the street lamp to save the little moth from the deadly puddle and realized how badly I missed the trees and the grass with only the horizon of the hills behind them. I looked up at the surrounding buildings and noticed that I’d collected all of my sighs as I slipped into the end of the world like a glove.

I’m not sure how long I stood there feeling the pulse of that wild place before the call of an owl broke the trance. I turned toward the space that would have been hers as the sound carried through the darkness and was gone. She always stopped talking when the owls called, as though she was afraid of missing something important. The leaves swayed in the wind and the night stitched itself back together around the absence. I still stood there at the tear and among the loose threads.

How did it come to this? The steel door felt intimidating, peeled paint and wheels that didn’t roll well anymore. I wasn’t new here but it was almost as if I didn’t know what I would find behind it. I still wanted to touch the things that burned, even the parts of us that didn’t fit into words. And the next day was going to meet me no matter what, with or without his diary of Sundays and our afterglows.

For a while I listened for her voice, but the night settled back into silence.  The moon was somewhere above the clouds now.  The owl had long since given up on me.  I thought about the wind and ghosts, and how neither seemed bothered by being gone.  The ache in my chest reminded me where it lived.  I ran my fingers through the cold dew on the grass and felt it stick to my skin. For a moment I could almost hear her laughing at how stubborn I was. Morning was going to come. It always does. I stayed there until the first light found the tree line.

Punctuation hit hard, it always did. Sunrise was my ellipsis and as I pulled back the sheet and ran my fingers over my stomach I understood what I was going to do. And why not? Eternity is in the blink of an eye and his voice was gravity. Destruction reveals what’s unbreakable, the echo called my name and I hoped I wasn’t too late.