dwellings

Fifty-one weeks since the sky crashed to the ground. Fifty-one weeks since it tore itself apart, crack by branching crack, and crumbled, like an eggshell, into nothing.

Fifty-one weeks since I saw what was behind, those electric-red lines of text, the angry backbone of infinity, the cosmic code. Fifty-one weeks since I discovered the answer, in the air, to the dual riddles of empathy and revenge.

Forty-seven weeks since I admitted what I knew. Forty-seven weeks since I turned my outsides in, locked that door, and threw away the only key I'd ever known.

Forty-seven weeks since the fury of the sky began to dull, cooling into jagged crystals, blue as the night, as comfortable as razors. Forty-seven weeks since I embarked on my lonely vigil. Forty-seven weeks since the answers came to me.

One week left to talk to you. One week left to pierce that tattered veil and recognize, momentarily, the shifting phantasm beneath. One week left to finish the dance, or never know another. One week left to take one last sweet bite, to once more tear into the glistening red skin of that awful fruit. One week left to forget I ever knew you.

And five weeks left to track the time, to revel beneath the emptied sky, to cast my hungry voice to farther shores and near ones. Five weeks left to embrace what I've become. Five weeks left to carry forward this intimate knowledge of death to that new and sorry marker. Five weeks left to see the green for what it was. Five weeks until it was, it was, it was.