Story Time Saturday - Everlasting (tell your story as briefly as possible)
VENI, VICI, METUI.
VENI, VICI, METUI.
We’d be friends for as long I can could remember. I remember letting myself into his house, running up to his room and laughing as I pushed open the door. Helping him on the first day of school. Pretending to hate each other when boys hate girls. Ding dong ditching the annoying lady down the street. Pool playing in the basement. I remember the smell of the crawl space under his stairs, filled with amazing piles of records.
I remember that day when playful shoves turned to passionate eyes…then us, together in the garage, hips pressed against hips and tongues swirling against tongues.
She put the candy in her mouth. Its flavor was sweet and sudden, and she smiled, the skin of her face bulging slightly where the little orb of sugar sat against her jaw. The flavors switched back and forth, from cherry to watermelon, and then to cinnamon and clove, and then more, more flavors, more licorice and apple pie and an infinite cascade of sweet, maddening taste, delightful and unpredictable. She was sixteen.
She turned twenty, and the candy hadn’t ebbed in flavor, no, not ebb, only flow, constantly flowing and drawing the saliva from her glands, the neurotransmitters absorbing the dopamine, the endorphins, whatever would set them off and she was always smiling, but that little ball of sweetness kept her from speaking too much. She was quiet.
When twenty seven had come and gone, the sweetness had become no less sweet, but her enjoyment of it had dulled. It was always there for her, when she went to sleep and when she woke up, before and after brushing her teeth, it was the appetizer, the meal, all of the courses of the meal, but not the dessert, because it was no longer a treat, no longer unique and special and an exception to be consumed with sweet, dark coffee after a filling meal, it was the constant and she began to hate it but it was always there, and it never occurred to her that she could throw it away and be done. She was never done.
Thirty two was the year she began to appreciate it again, to enjoy its stability, its consistency, and she began to mould her life around it, this little piece of sweetness. All things were becoming, in her eyes, spherical. A day was spherical, and her home, too. All of life was a sphere. Yet she smiled less those years, not because of the candy’s telltale bulge, but because her teeth were failing her. Or rather, she had failed them and didn’t like to show off the fruits of her labor. She soon began to rely on that little, everlasting piece of candy, the same she had placed in her mouth at age sixteen. And to that end, she told herself that she loved it. She did.
At forty, the sweetness left. It was now just a little ball of nothing inside of her, just behind her teeth, sometimes right beside. She considered spitting the candy out and leaving it behind. She considered it for the first time. But was was she to do with her lips, her teeth, the tip of her tongue? How would she know what to do around people without it? She held on.
At forty eight, She started to imagine the sweetness. Her memories of it were still strong and she remembered them onto the candy that was still there, still the same size it had always been, only emptier than it had been all those years ago. And that emptiness was just ripe to be filled and she had plenty of memories, primed and ready to fill up that little, tiny vessel; she had decades, ages, whole centuries inside of her. She was happy to remember.
And decades passed, and as she passed, body suddenly clasped by gravity’s frail hands and pulled down as she walked along the street, the candy finally slipped from her tongue, rolled into a sewer drain, and floated away. It’s anybody’s guess where it is, now.
(submission from manwithhat)
We are all of us made of stars, constantly providing fuel for that which follows.
We are all immortal, each of us, in our own special way. While the world attempts to define us as small, insignificant even, we are so much more than that. Are we everlasting, can anyone really tell us what comes at the end? In the end we will go back to the beginning, when the Universe itself was simply a collection of energy spiraling around without a care in the world. If there was order it was chaotic; beautifully wild and free. Then we were all equals, parts of a larger whole none of us could comprehend, in fact there was little comprehension at all. Perhaps there was a collective consciousness, unheard music of the cosmos as energy danced around on a microscopic level, gathering strength in confidence. Eventually our resolve grew, and larger more concrete forms emerged. Stars burning with great energy, yelling “Here I am!”; planets slowly growing from small beginnings, eventually announcing their presence in the neighborhood which was ever expanding. Like a small town ones neighbors often far away, but just in view to let us know we’re not alone. Then again there wasn’t anyone to know we were alone, maybe there wash’t even an alone. So energy kept gathering and changing, adapting to situations and continually rising above whatever obstacles were placed before it.
Life emerged. Crawled, scraped and fought its way to the surface. It collided with itself, immersed itself into the myriad of environments and took over with a ferocity as of yet unmatched. Energy combining together in new and wonderful ways until it resulted in conscious beings, aware of themselves. Concepts of one’s place in the world began to emerge, and instead of joining we separated, not often by choice but by force. “We are not like them, they are not like us” spoke leaders too blind to see the beauty of it all. Ignorant of the teeming mass of energy floating above their heads, of the chaotic and beautiful world unstopping, unfulfilled and every changing. So we gazed upon the sky and wondered, explored, begged to question the very fiber of our beings.
Then we reached immortality, yet none of us knew it.
That energy never died, never went away, it simply turned into something new. Even once we’re gone our energy is put into new life, forever linking into a cycle begun so long ago that it’s beyond comprehension, extending beyond conventional concepts of time. We are everlasting and immortal, our energy fueling future generations, becoming the seeds for future stars; complex forms of life such as plants and animals. Long after we’re gone our energy lingers, our inventions and ideas extending outward beyond even the stars themselves, flying past known universes and space. Everlasting and beautiful, composed of stars and dead planets, singing a song that goes unheard, yet lulls us to sleep and leaves us at peace.
It is the Universe, and we are a part of it, just as its inside of us, everlasting, constantly beautiful and never predictable.
Your prompt this week is:
everlasting
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!
I want to try adding an extra rule this time in the hopes that it will make things more interesting, so more of you will participate!
This time, I want you to tell your story as briefly as possible.
Readysetgo!
Sweeping up the dust
and emptying it into boxes
alongside trophies and wedding pictures,
memorabilia and regalia.Ah, my love…
I sit alone
Wind rushes through open window
My womb makes the same noise now
Without any pulse
Never was a pulse anyway, I muse
Just a swarm of bees buzzing
My mind swimming and feeling the truth
My heart not wanting to see
Now something else grows inside
Resentment and fear and loss
The passage of time
Maybe cancer
Maybe the mutant isn’t gone yet
So I sit
and I muse
about what was not to be and what is
and how sad that makes me
and how I don’t allow it
how I want it all to be over.
