red earth funeral

The yelp was one of true agony, like a child’s cry mixed with confusion and pure terror. He didn’t look back. His knees would not have been able to hold up. As it was, he was walking too slowly anyway. The others were already far ahead and his heart beat was riding a dangerous wave that had nothing to do with the midday sun or the journey that lay behind him. He didn’t want to picture the dog. His dog. He pushed away the black fur in his mind and tried the same with the eyes, though they were relentlessly present. And in this picture he’d held protectively in his heart, where the dogs devotion lay in big round brown pools in his lap, he could see the eyes growing wider and wider, the whites showing like sharks teeth. And for a moment they really were sharks teeth, digging in to his throat, , blocking his breath and causing him to fight back tears. They would have their run later. First he needed to catch up.
He hadn’t always been so slow of course. He hadn’t always been old. In his youth he was so fast, his thoughts were whizzing at such giddy speeds, that he wouldn’t have noticed the growth of weeds over his old family home or his mothers steps becoming shorter with her breath when she tried to rid of them. He would first learn to slow down at the departure of a long limbed girlfriend who’d get tied up in his sheets. He’d wipe long strands of hair from her red mouth and press his onto it. He thought his lips could rest there forever, but she had other plans for hers and his ended up seeking the fading smell she left on one of the pillows.
He would slow down a few more times for love in his life, including this time, except that he was the one walking away.
His dusty shoes tread heavily on a sandy coloured path laced with plastic bags and cans of softdrink, that looked oddly immaculate. A swarm of fruit flies hovered over a tied up rubbish bag like prisoners tied to invisible shackles. The reeds in the fields now hung their heads. Only a few evenings earlier, he’d walked the dog through them, tall like soldiers, taking in the evening sea breeze and the remnants of sunlight sparkled and turned the land to gold. He was the richest man on earth, unaware of the poison spreading beneath the soles of his shoes. He could see the ship on the horizon and a string of men and women pushing to board it. The two men that had knocked on his door this morning, were there already. Their wives stood anxious with cocked hips for babies and aprons for children to hang off. He listened for the silence broken by tall grass dancing with the wind, a private universe that always welcomed him in, but the chaos on the beach suffocated its melody entirely until only his fingers, traced along the tips of the few reeds that still stood proud, could hear it. The sand begged for him to take his shoes off one last time and as his toes sank down into the cool of it, he finally slowed down. He licked the salt off his upper lip. He tasted like the sea. His footprints directed away from the overflowing boat and he let the waves tickle his ankles for a while before he stepped in further. Before he filled his lungs with one last breath. Before he gave in to his last lovers embrace.

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Tags:

age, death, jessica, loss, old, poison and tremp