Casey Gilfillan

My primordial deathbed was a great flood; the memory eraser, body snatcher. It rained and the sky wept relentlessly, so that minutes and hours became interchangeable; indistinguishable. Days passed with the feeling of a moment, the rain steadfast in purge. I was flying down the road with abominable speed, ignorant to consequence and fixed in direction. Into the gray, sleeted and slick by the rain that was everywhere and did not stop. I did not stop.

The speckled frame, clustered and overcrowding the image. I could not keep up though I tried, and I did not stop. The blurred visage, my teary view, and their pittering vocalization were shrouded by the phantomic flood. The froth clouded and bubbled, sputtering and flowing and flailing from behind like the tail of a ghost or the wing of an angel. It propelled and obscured, fanning out into a paralyzing opacity. I did not stop.

Delivered to the great expanse, white and beaming and glaringly intimate. My eyes fell upward and I matched the sky, the purge of hesitation unfolding. I buckled down, felt the tightening grip around my waist. The tug to the lush, drifting off into that serene ambiguity. Just beyond the barrier. Oh what a thrill, to be carried off and silenced by the morbid lust of this fog. What a thrill, to return from whence you came.