Me, Undone

I realize that beauty is fading fast It's the price we pay for wisdom and better days Webs move across the corners of my eyes soft folds have arrived at the edges of my smile I look out to see awkward teenagers struggling to chart a foreign landscape so precariously full of wide life the sun is beginning to set warm gold against my back this day is the best it will ever be ever more now I know that this body is not home simply a stunning arrangement casing for an expanse so wide the very thought of it makes me cry yes, the sun is setting warm gold against my back but we are not the sunset We are the very sky.

And then, she pondered the absurdity of life. Each moment. One by one. Pulled closer and wrapped into a cord tight around her neck. A jewel placed in the center. She had searched for days to find something to keep her here.   A twenty minute TED Talk. A self-help book.   All lovely, but ultimately ephemeral. Nothing could save the soul that now hung a corpse. Its rotten stink filling the air wherever she traversed. She had dreams of the sea rolling in and her dead mother coming with a blanket to protect her. Was it a gesture of comfort or a motioning to go forward?   Would she finally let her follow? “Nothing will ever be as beautiful,” she said as she stepped onto the chair. Beauty, a transitory and subjective human construction. With the lights dimmed now, she only saw shades of grey. In the bathroom, she examined the totality of her earthly experience. Is this what they spoke of? Was there nothing more? For the life of her, she could not remember wha...