He holds me tighter, his only response. I listen to the quiet beat of his heart, and relish the soft rise and fall of his chest. A light breeze curls around us. My hair slides across his shoulders moved by gentle currents of air. I open my eyes and face the unfathomable chasm spread before us. I don't want to see it.
His hand squeezes mine. "It's time" he tells me. I feel his breath on my neck. Pink flushes into my white knuckled grasp as my fingers gently uncurl. I consider the bent metal object I had been clutching so tightly. "Why a spoon?" My silent thoughts spoken aloud echo in the desolation. Why would anyone choose such a tool to fill in such wreckage?
"Because change is slow. It won't happen overnight. But, it will happen." He answers as he aids me in scooping in the first spoonful of scorched earth. It tinkles like the sounds of chimes touched by wind and shimmers as sprinkles of sunlight as it descends down into nothing.
"It's all so bleak." I tell him. My hand shakes wanting to drop the spoon. Watch it turn end over end and fade into the deep well of dirt and nothing.
"Only if you let it be."
I take a spoonful of dirt and I drop it in. It fans out, descending as a cloud of dust. I scoop up another, and yet another. I see something tiny, small as a grain of rice, wriggle out of the pores of my skin. It squirms down my leg and falls unto singed burnt rock. A small piece of my self hatred crawling away, disgusting and maggot like. Detached, I watch it go and take in the charred landscape surrounding. "There's so much loss."
"That deficit is not yours but that of what you perceive to be missing."
"How do you not feel the loss of something tangible. When all there is devastation and void?"
He takes my hand and we spoon in one more cloud of dust. It dances in the breeze,glitters in the light and sounds like children's laughter. I put my hand absently down onto the rock beside me. I flinch. Instead of dust I feel grass, soft and alive. I look at these small green sprouts flourishing in my world of destruction. Some dark part of me stirs. I feel more alive with it's awakening. I trace my hand over the tender leaves of grass. The corners of my mouth twitch as I think of tearing them for the ground and burning them. I let the urge pass and I feel it coiling inside me. Waiting. I close my eyes, shudder, and sigh. Peace again. I leave the delicate signs of life to grow and continue to spoon dust into the void.
