From Art Exhibit "How Strangely Souls Connect"

Prose piece based on Falling is Like This.

You are Missing from Me

She’s gone.

Over the rails.

Small, dark. Smaller, darker. Smallest, darkest.

Gone.

Like ellipsis into the night.

From afar, it looked like he reached for her, arms stretching over the rails.

But he didn’t really try to catch her.

He expected her to fly.

So, instead, he closes his eyes, and behind them, he watches her falling.

But then…

Her skin peeling from her bone, shedding the world, shedding her cage. Rips in her shoulder and feathers emerging.

Wings.

She skims the rocks instead of hitting them, close enough to make the water ripple, and a feather gently lands on its surface.

She pulls up, determined, into the bruised sky.

And from behind his eyes he sees her face, as if for the first time.

Except it’s the last.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’ll try harder next time we meet.”

And he slips away into the bottom of the spoon, half a soul, forgetting it was once whole.