Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Fading Away

She is watching herself drink her own ashes. How could this be? She had been maintaining the living she in the past. She made sure not to drift so far that the living she would fade. She made sure not to sink so far as to darken too much the living she. Yet, there the living she sat drinking her own ashes.

Her ashes had powdered her face with a thin layer of gray that darkened into tiny extending roots from the tears trickling from her eyes.  The living she was fading.

The paleness and the ash of the living she had become such that her face looked like a china doll with the tiny cracked lines of age. Her small pale ashen hands lightly shook as she lifted the cup to her lips and tipped and lowered and lifted and tipped. Such a sight was horrifying to the she within the river, not only that the living she had faded so far, but the attention it would most surely bring.

How had it become this bad?  How could she not have seen it?  All it took would be a reach through the water, a grasp, a grip, a touch, a hold, a feel, a comfort to the living she.  She could not.  She would not.  She had not the strength.  She had not the courage.

From dirt to cup, from cup to ash, from ash to mouth, it was too late. It was far too late. Had she seen another beside the river suffer the same fate, she could have done something. She would have known. She would have seen sooner. It would not have come to this...

"Now that I've decided not to stay
I can feel me start to fade away
Everything is back where it belongs
I will be beside you before long" - NIN


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