Extract

How quickly our everyday realms sink into the mythic quicksand of memory. We are here. We were there. How quickly the forms of our ordinary mornings shift into twilight apparitions, pointing to the dark pool of night, signalling the gentle onset of death. Slowly, wittingly or not, we are undergoing a subtle drowning, a silent sinking into oblivion.

I would like to write a story for you.

We have shared so many stories, but like our time together, they have passed into the dream realm. I recall parts of them, though all recollections are dusted with a golden, obscuring vapour. I remember when you told me about your mother and your sisters. As you spoke, the tragedy seemed to unfold from the sky. The shop became a holy bowl of light, overwhelming as music, fragile as a soap bubble. You grew. Your brown eyes glowed like back-lit amber, your hair streamed in godlike coils of ancient rope. You spoke death with the assuring breath of an archangel, sword flaming against the dark. I truly loved you that day. You reminded me that only people matter. You reminded me to live with love.