"What happened?"
"We got old, love."
The clarity of her question emerged so stark from her delirium, and his response so prompt yet so profound.
I close my eyes and reopen them, and time passes with no one pushing it along; like Newton's Law it seems to just remain in perpetual motion. I can close them for longer. Is that what happened?
Wait.
I close my eyes again, and become aware of the story from another side of the room.
"Is pain, is always the pain, every night I pray that it will be gone when I wake up, but is still there." Her plea to external sources or higher powers to remedy her situation repeated to the point of no distinction from background noise. Her requests persist, despite yielding no success. She closes her eyes, and waits; time continues.
I close my eyes, and cast them backwards in time.
The moments when it becomes real that all we are all both merely and incredibly human.
The moments when two souls remove their human skin and allow a small glimpse of full exposure; the beautiful and the vile.
The moments when it becomes real that souls are temporarily human.
Because these moments are temporary, as we are.
Wait. Or don't wait. Keep your eyes shut, or open them.
And then we're old.
