The One I Lived

I live after my death day by day, and I am strong

----------------------------------------

Welcome to the windows

of God’s living room.

It will only take a moment,

or many millions, but

Earth’s long years grow small

here. I see you came with a camera

slung around your neck.

Let’s print all that living.

It was given to me sometime between

birth and the before. It steals memories

with burglar precision. It takes shots from fifty,

a thousand yards, and it never misses. Even

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

when I screw my eyes shut and shove my palms

over the glass eye, it ruptures through skin and shame.

The sleek black box records not only the words I say, but

the words I’ve felt skidding past me like bristled

asphalt, broken concrete teeth bared. The words

I’ve whipped out like lashes in my mind, too afraid

to let them loose on their intended target, a bitter

rope to swallow. It even captivates and ensnares

the emotions, mine and others. A camera of sorts

that captures smell and feel and feelings.

The ugliest of things, burrowed in myself

and others. The sacred memories carefully hidden

away like a childhood stuffed bear or blanket, tattered

from being fingered and clutched in darkness. Film

that never runs dry, memory that never sinks

with the weight of the parading years.

And he prints them, every shot, the good and the bad and the hard and the soft and the sharp and the dull and the new and the old and the kiss and the ache. Handing me a stack, we stick them to the window glass, blocking out God’s own personal garden. I start by looking through the images—the sunflowers all face towards us from the green outside. But as we create our own kind of movie, novel or play, he begins to ask about the teacher, the fireflies in a jar under the bed, the slap across my face and my raw pride, the diapers and cakes with numbered candles and funeral potatoes, brought and received. I find myself laughing, crying, hiding my face in shame, joking, storytelling, explaining, questioning, conjecturing, understanding. I find myself in the images, this collage heavy with life in a room of living. He listens like the mountains who hear the Earth shifting around their proud peaks for the years of the planet’s spinning existence. No one has listened to me for so long—not even myself.

I saw my life flash before my eyes.