We gathered our water and packs at daybreak to hike hand in hand toward the distant ruinβ a tall stone chimney planted on otherwise empty acreage, a kudzu-covered tower, the ghost of a farmhouse now a home to field mice, black beetles and bats, with bricks the color of weathered blood, vertebrae stacked a century and a half ago by a stonemasonβs craft, still solid and bonded despite the slow decay of arthritic mortar.
How long have we walked together?
The morning is all we have left to ponder. We walk for hours; the chimney grows larger at our approach. I want to ask you a question about the night we met, what you said just before I held you for the first time, but then I catch sight of my hand and realize I am walking alone, moving inexorably toward a ruination of my own making. How could I have been so careless? Unable to stop, every step strips something away: my hair thins and falls, as white and weak as sickled wiregrass; another step and my body atomizes into the stuff of stars, pollen scattered on a rising wind.
So this is what it feels like to decay.
By the time I reach the ruin I am mostly cinder and ash, a sorry vestige sown in a quiet field, a forgotten landmark that strangers will visit, if only to contemplate how the evening fog spindles like smoke along the enduring column of my spine.