553. Dysphoria

When one is alone and wet and cold, and the distance between foot and cottage is not the distance feared, one has thoughts, some heavy like old iron, others light as hummingbirds and still some like the wasp. With a real wasp, one can run or one can swat, or if stung, one knows a life was given in the act. But when the wasp is inside and the sting within, well, one has thoughts best not shared.

I played in my mind what I would say. Then I played it again and I knew, what sounded so good in my imagination would remain as separate from the act as the play from the audience, as the reader from the book, as the ink from the idea. So, I took all my words and I kicked them before me as the rocks before my raisined toes, my anger shielding the pain, for what could a toe know of the woe of heart, the rend of soul, the dull ache of mind turned on itself.

The night air was warm and humid and I breathed the fire of salt into my dry nostrils and the burning brought tears to my eyes, salt to salt as dust to dust. That's when I saw a sight I will never forget and felt a burning in my failed lungs. Like that, they were gone and for all the running and yelling I might as well have been in a dream. The cottage was not the same and the emptiness of wall was but a pond to the empty ocean of my heart.