It rose with the sun, and lasted all day.

I worshiped the light stripes crossing on my jeans, uncurled tendrils of consciousness tapping those around me on their ears. They were meant to unfold gently but I got excited, could not keep them from leaping away and splaying out into grotesque poses. Oh but to pour myself like hot and liquid joy, the sweet candy kiss of spring twitterpation. It’s mad, isn’t it, this incessant series of endings and beginnings?

Death lurks, cold and stilling, does not move. This is the sudden weight on unsuspecting shoulders. Enormous, black, fragile. I do not understand. Afraid to speak, afraid of shattering glass in the dark. Consolation? There is nothing to say; I hold my breath. Less than the tiniest piece of you, but a piece nonetheless.

And death is no parenthesis.