Colors cascaded around
her smile, laughing like the
first blooms of spring bearing up
under the last ***** blush
of winter's kiss.

I laughed with the colors. Red and
orange and the softest sunset pink - blue
like diamonds from the sky, and green
as thick and billowed as the freshest
prairie wave.

She danced in my heart like a
fairy more happy and pure than
childhood itself.
No sorrow overwhelmed that vision,
though it tainted the edges on every side.
The more I looked the more I could
see their angry boiling, creeping
like the wrinkled edge of a wildfire
dying to infect and purge the light.
But she shone.
Framed by that dark storm
on every side, and scarfed
with a cascade of colors more
brilliant than I knew how to
imagine.

The wheels of her chair spun,
the trembling of her hands flung
a million stars aloft at every quiver.
In the wrinkles of her face
I saw the individual moments of a hundred years
condense,
and a tear fell off her chin
as she looked at me and whispered,
"Look within."

"I am," I said,
and cried myself, the thin
and watery tears of age, long toil,
and unrelenting joy.
Her time had come and
mine had not and yet the
silence of our breathing was
enough to still this final
terrible, beautiful, terrifying storm.

I took her hand and squeezed it
gently, laid it down
on her lap and
whispered in her ear that
hung down low with time,
"Look down on me, when you
are gone.
I follow close behind."