(Part 1, Part 2)
 
“As I stated in my letter of withdrawal…”
 
She opens her eyes and feels the weight of everything press in and overwhelm her system and she allows it to sit there until she thinks she will burst and exhales. He looks at her. She closes her eyes and forgets how to breathe. Rhythms failing. Patterns are now chaos. Everything breaks apart at the epicenter. Here, in this darkness, everything is nothing. Slowly the external world begins to form through symbols and abstractions. The idea of scent manifests first. Then sound. Then touch. Then taste. All of it out of reach, sensethings of indeterminable origin. She opens her eyes to reach them, to make them whole, but this, too, is nothing but darkness and fear.
 
“…I, um…I’m having a difficult time forming the words.”
 
“Try.”
 
“Well, it’s because I’m not ready, don’t feel like I would perform my best at this juncture.”
 
“Yes that’s essentially what you wrote.”

“But, yeah, no, it was because of my family. It was because of her.”

Particles break apart and reform. The wind carries her on its wings.

“Her…”

“Yes her.”

“But she’s gone now isn’t she?”

“Who are you again?”

“She coming back you know.”

“What?”

“You’ve seen her and she’s on her way here from there.”

“What?”

When she sees the world it is all a blur of colors and memories—mostly red and yellow and pain. Immobile. Unable to move of her own volition. Pushed or pulled, it does not matter. This is that and she feels more that the earth is moving beneath her than she feels she is hovering across its surface. Red. Dried rivers of red. Tributaries of I am run deep through the surface of her legs. The water is tepid at best. Weightless. Subtle revolution.

The man stands to leave and I am unsure what to do so I shake his hand and he thanks me for my time saying that he’d wish I would reconsider and I’d be a great fit for the University so I nod.

Later that night I lay on my back in bed staring at the stars out of my window as they blink on and off with every passing cloud. My legs spasm and pain sears through them. I wince but do not move.

Earlier my father asked me about the man from the University and my sister shifted in her seat.

Its never truly dark here. Pinholes in the sky. Even in cloud cover, the brightness of the moon is indefatigable, striking the moisture and spreading its great arms across the land in hazy glory.

Lisa hasn’t spoken for months now. The last word anyone heard her say was, “No.” Not loud, not shouting, barely a whisper—”no.”

Tim hasn’t been around much, flying whenever he can. Thinks he cam make a real thing out of dusting.

Slowly I find myself here, half-awake, half-asleep and all I see are dark shapes in the corner of a black canvas. Memories intermingle with dreamscapes, creating a reality that should be wholly separate but somehow nudges into the peripheral space at the back of my head. I hear voices, calling my name. I hear thoughts. I hear nothing. I hear the sound of rain and dust. It smells like metal.

I open my eyes and know it’s still night. I close them and see red orange and this searing sense of fear starts at my forehead and quickly shivers its way down the rest of my body until my toes are twitching. My skin is drowning, on fire. I try to sit up but cannot. I try to move my arms but cannot. I try to roll of my back but cannot. I try to say help but only my mouth opens—no noise leaving my throat. I open my eyes and see a shadow on my chest, crimson edges. I close my eyes and fall.

The moonlight illuminates the earth smoothing the edges of the shapes until they become more than formless things, lost on the constant curvature. She is reminded of long roads. A round surface viewed at a close enough proximity becomes a straight line. A to B. Origin to destination. Start to finish. No one really tells you that you have a choice where your destination can lie. Not in the x, y scheme, be what you want to be…more peripheral, abstract. Time, but not time. A river flows to become a lake, a sea, an ocean. The water moves, swirls, evaporates, falls. Her river originated from a glacier, became a stream, and plummeted off the crag of a mountain into oblivion.