“How is it ?” he cried. “How is it that she left me so easily?”

“She never left you.”

“She’s not here anymore!” His fist banged on the table. “I cannot see her, touch her, taste her, hear her, smell her!”

“You mean to say, that she is not of your world anymore. But that is not of her doing. She is not a unique thing. Her vision is a sculpture, her skin is silk, she tastes like strawberries, and sounds like a soft waterful. Her scent is a metaphor of life. If she is not of your world anymore, that is of your doing! If you could only open your eyes and see, my friend, it was not her that left you behind.”

Walking was once so weightless. But now I stand here, thoughtlogged, waterful. Gazing unblinkingly at the chlorine stained rocks, I rip the northern lights from my eyes. The thunder steals away, leaving ringing ears reaching for more, lightning returns to the sun. The storm is replaced with moldy gray smeared with cotton candy cirrus. Children make lemonade with no need for sugar, and passersby gulp too-big sips, and cavity drips from their rotting lips. Night falls, the children fold up their twenty-five cent stand and leave the lemon juice for the sweet-seeking hummingbirds. The children don't notice the grid in the sky. Glittering rows of nebulae and crescent stars framed the light-polluted navy; a hand imagined the constellations, drew them, and pasted each fraying corner, neatly, line to line, no coloring outside the lines, nothing left to the imagination. But wasn't that the point? To stare in wonder with someone you loved? Imagining, dreaming about the world beyond? Not a single corner/ piece was left unglued/ fluttering in the wind. There wasn't a single fluttering bit to peel back and reveal the ancient unknown wallpaper of the universe beneath.
I search for a cumulus to save me but I fall, finding the ground far too soon.