My vision is so clear now, and I’m not sure how that is for I have discovered an absence of eyes on my body. Not that I reached up to feel for them in there sockets because my hands are no longer present either. Not disappeared or detached, but rather irrelevant.

My senses are electric. My vision is clear, as I said, but so clear I am able to see the past and future. I can hear conversations I had months ago…I think it was months ago, time is another thing that has become irrelevant. Everything I have ever grasped a hold of as mileposts in my life, or reminders of my humanity are rendered useless in this place.

Even the use of ‘I’ seems useless for I am now a part of everything. When I hear a noise I hear it from an ear ten thousand miles away. My sense of taste picks up a flavor from long past. My memory is flooded with images from other lives. My mind, though once caught on ideas of beliefs and ethics, is now free to experience all that is and ever was.

‘I’ have become ‘We’, and We are everyone who has ever lived and who will ever live. At once I realize We are the breath of life. And We are part of the web waiting to catch us after death.

meharg '07

No one notices the shade on the front stoop. No one even glaces at it when it crosses the sitting room, silent and eternal.

In what seems little more than a light breeze on their cheeks the shade begins to perform an intricate dance, spinning and twirling, hopping and throwing it's head back, coughing and cackling, its energy builds into a frenzy,
but no one seems to see.

On my shoulder I feel it's icy, bony hand.
Taking hold, I naturally know the steps of it's dance, no lessons needed.
I spin and swirl, toss my head back and let out a loud cackle, but no one hears.

I am amazed at the ease of by body, how fast my turns have become
and how light of foot I feel.
My new partner, though once grotesque to my eye, now seems the very prince I've longed to see.
We dip, hop and merengue. With him the tango is like second nature. I am as fluid as water.
Spinning and twirling my body now electric.
We dance for hours, or has it been years, I can't tell.

When at last we are through we cross the sitting room, hand in hand. Now through the front door on to the stoop, his grip on my hand loosens.
I feel my body separating into the tiniest fragments.
I look back at my dancing prince only to see bones and old cloth. A grotesque shade making it's way to the next door.

meharg '07