escapril day 24: black hole
A slow pull into nothing,
They sink away into distant space,
And my arm goes with them
In a straining reach to draw them back.
But my arm only stretches and stretches
Into spaghetti linking shoulder to wrist.
I watch as they drift further and further
Away – once a body with bones and skin
And eyes and teeth, melting into
Something I can barely see
A relic maybe – unrecognisable
Against a black cosmic sea.
But I’m not sure which of us
Is falling into a black hole.
Is it my hand hovering in space
Inches from their face
While my body pulls away?
Stretching s t r e t c h i n g.
Or is it my body floating here and
My hand – following f o l l o w i n g
Them into a void of forgotten?
Soon my hand is stretched so far from
My chest (and my heart) that it tears
From my shoulder with a gut wrenching rip.
I watched it spiral away
Like a deflating balloon.
I don’t mind too much, somehow
It stopped feeling like mine long ago.
It’s theirs now – it’s what I left for them –
A souvenir of myself, drifting, following.
Eventually my feet touch down
On some planet, and I know it’s them
Pulling away. I notice for the first time,
Only my arm was ever outstretched.
I watch them continue into a vacuum
– becoming something …. else
Mangled and disfigured at the hands of time,
They started as a stranger,
Then became a friend,
Then a once,
Then a stranger again,
And then –
Lauren Kathleen 