The Bronze Horseman Waltz

When I close my eyes, I see images...

Head in the grass, fluffy cumulous in the sky, vortices in my hair...

Serpentine mountains, a hazy sky, clothes plastered to my skin in the down pour, the water rushing past my ankles, the sound of a million raindrops falling, the smiles of my family...

The creaky house surrounded by cookie batter apartments, the smell of wine and sweat, and a single moment of rapture as violin, cello, and piano meshed in a sad lullaby of perfect dissonance...

The smell of wet grass in the evening air, the post-thunderstorm shocks folding slate grey clouds, a thick mist rising in the warmth, the soft panting of my sandy four-legged companion, and the scintillating ears of the waterlogged bunnies along the path...

The chalky air with the sound of soft conversations and turning pages, the achingly loud sound of thought...

The blinding image of sun reflected off of a glass lattice, the imposing colossus, and the sound of jets popping like air-borne cavitation...

Faster and faster and faster, I spiral. An ocean of minutes, a solar system of days, a galaxy of years, a universe of memories, accelerating towards The end.

Each day, shorter than the last.

And with my eyes closed, I can see it all. From the surface of the Earth, my view expands and expands until, like the Dead Sea, I float in the void, surrounded by flashing, blinding lights of memory.

A great unfolding. A grand waltz.

And when I open my eyes, the imprint is seared onto the backs of my photo-paper eyelids, so vibrantly that it compels me to reach and stretch outwards, to the world and universe beyond. To grab, to seize, to hold, and to keep each globule of joy...

And to allow my hands to become weathered and cracked and scarred with Life, so that I know, when I come to die, that I have lived.