Mapping a World Without You [Prose]

With parchment and glistening fingertips, I trace a house to another with roaring rivers that can swallow even Noah’s ark whole.

There is no eternal chase: I rearrange the skies so that the sun and moon dangle lifeless above my head, like dim light bulbs flickering on, off, on, off.

Half the world’s melted; the other half, a desert. And all I have are streets left unnamed;

clouds that are too heavy and too grey. I used to think the sky is God’s canvas. The clouds, His paint. And He’s got hands too big, yet creates the most delicate of art with the tip of His fingers; tapping across the blue expanse as though playing a piano. But it started raining. And it’s been storming since.

The flood wiped away the poets. All I have left are clocks that know nothing of flight. They fall and sprout wings made of faith. All I have left are clocks that tell secrets other than time. And they all say faith makes no one fly.

I’ve always dreamt of worlds without you. They were made of forest fires and tornadoes. Blood and destruction.

But lately I’ve been sowing seeds that grow into flowers not quite blooming, not quite wilting. Merely existing.

And I think there’s nothing sadder than existing: just being here, when there is no here.

I’d rather be there. But you’re not there either.