Curdled Cream

The day the world realized I was no longer young was the first time I saw my corpse. I knew there was a shallow grave with my name on it, and accepted that tombstones were only flawed pageantry. Before that I was an erratic heart monitor caught up in the voluptuous highs and lows.

I was innocent at some point. There were mornings that I woke up fresh and virginal, and in the back of mind I felt like Jesus before he knew he had to die. I used to call those days the September of my life.

People would probably call those thoughts naive. Like the day I proclaimed your eyes were like a falling leaf. Often it felt like the sugary first lick of a lollipop. Sometimes it was so sweet you devoured it whole without even enjoying it. There was also that time you ran away from your pulse. Your lips tingled leaving mine. These were all stories in a head that once remembered them as true.

Without ever caring to look the sunlight caught up to my shadow. By shadow I mean the buried parts you can’t see. There was a legend once about a cave that harbored fear. I don’t remember what it looked like, but I was sure I was about to walk in. What floats to the top has usually been festering on the bottom. Lets call that curdled cream.

It was about this time I became blind while still being able to see. I often found myself walking forlorn in long corridors. My hands were like skeleton keys, I just never found for what. Out of a door came a haggard face that once could of a been a beautiful you. You were blind too. At this point we fumbled to clasp hands. They sucked together like blood hurtling down a drain. All I remember now are footsteps that sounded like gunshots. All that was caressing my hand was air.

If this story were a calender we would be in December now. What’s the word you use when you put horrific slashes through the numbered days? It’s countdown, I believe. Except instead of slashes you should imagine a fresh corpse. Note the lukewarm aura of heat, the slight curling of the feet. Marvel at what those eyes can no longer see. It would be a safe bet to say those eyes are dead. You would lose your money if you believed they saw less than you.

That corpse was me. All that’s left is to explain why I stopped breathing. Right now I’m being prepped to return to the earth. In about forty eight hours I’ll retire beneath the ground. There will be a marker that futilely attempts to encapsulate a life. Then there will be momentary grief that fades like colors in the sun. Before all this had to happen there was an organ called a diaphragm that moved like a metronome. That device no longer keeps time. It would be easier if you just envisioned a tourniquet right now. Sometimes you can’t stop the buried things from bleeding out. It’s not that you die from the drainage, but rather from the fact that all your secrets are spilling out. There was a cure for that blindness after all.