A flashback of fragments,
fragments spread throughout all your life.
The flashback that all survivors of a close death talk about.
I took four steps to you.
I touched bare skin on the back of your neck.
The touch brought it. And
It was vivid images of colors and lights and fragments of my time, swirling around at a rushed speed inside of my mind, inside of my whole body,
I was removed from the earth where my hand was touching your bare skin
and swept into another space.
It was a red balloon I remembered from when I was young, a red balloon floating further and further up into the clouded blue sky, and me asking my mom where it was going with big tears in my eyes, if it was going to burst open or if it was going to float on forever.
It was my dollhouse with the miniature couches and picture frames. It was tulips, picking the ripe tomatoes in the garden, the Atlantic ocean and the warm sand, that time my father was mad at me, laying in the sunlit grass overcome by a knowledge that warmed me far more than the sun could: ‘this is what it is to be happy’.
Beaming yellows and honest reds and deep emerald greens transformed fragments to blazing lights and more colors until I was returned to the white walled apartment.
I was standing beside you, touching the bare skin on the back of your neck.
Your body begun to turn into powder, into dust. I reached to grab on to you further, but you slipped out of my grasp, out of your chair. Over my palms, intertwining through my fingers, to the floor of hard wood, you slipped like sand. And that’s what you were. You were a pile on the floor.
On my knees, I whispered your name.
But you did not respond.
