Ariel

 Ariel 



Ariel got off the phone with the disability lawyer.  A buoyant light was falling through his chest, tugging him down.


Her voice had been so kind and strong that he wanted to cry.  She was such a merciful executioner.  He decided he would fix her face in his mind, even though he’d never seen it and never would.  Her eyes would be green and vibrant, her hair black, her face firm but pitying.  She would hold back tears and stroke his hair with unseen hands the whole time, while he was walking into the white cloud.  He would become sleepier and sleepier, while every line and fine distinction disappeared, erased by atomizing fine shards of soft white light.  He would keep walking while every part of his body vanished.  Every part of her face would disappear but the great green eyes, hovering in the white gauze.  He would come closer and closer, beckoned by the strange, broken waltz that the white light in his chest sang in unfamiliar language. And now her eyes were shining with sympathetic tears.  





Crying after having held back for too long runs the risk of totally dissolving a person, into the ether.  It is necessary to freeze totally, to dam up one’s lachrymal ducts, to prevent any intrusion; to protect against the corrosive solvents that would obliterate one without care.



(Illustration by Theodore Naylor)




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