Leaving home

The wind was starting to tumble down off of warmth's edge that September: the time of year jackets begin to pop out of thin air. As we sat at the table, my mind reeled with nerves and choked submerged in sadness.

The crumbs on the table arrived slowly, slowly, slowly, eventually falling from the meat of our history. They lay scattered and still, lonely, sad stars waiting to be brushed aside by the hands of some wild monster pulsating force. They were all I could look at as I sat there and fizzed at the blunt black future, tortured by the present's imminent death. It was a cliff hanger in my life, as they say and a cliff hanger in yours.

I was young and playing on the grey carpet floor. Maybe crawling. I smiled. Two smiles back. Soft voices through the air. Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence on a record player, and smells fresh eyed innocence. Toys surround me as I ponder and stumble, you laugh and cry.

I wonder why it hurts so much, briefly, and try to throw away the onrushing flow, sharp nuggets of cobwebbed comet. The move must be made. must be made. must be made. Move germ fed the body since zero grown into nature. expectations made reality. path ahead became the only journey. Landscape clear and bright and brilliant. We speak a bit and then a bit more. Words slowly poked forth and back. I need to move up and out, I think: the air here isn't mine to breathe.

Toddler frame, running up to me she said: dinner's ready, bhai, dinner's ready! Grimmace, scowl, fuck off, push.

We step out of the restaurant and the landscape clear and bright opens up before. Walk back to the car the gates opposite dividing my life from there and now, from you and me. "Goodbye Rik". Tears cascade down both sides of our mountain. The landscape crumbles at the edges, the dream momentarily dissolved and destroyed into a single point of nothing.