by Brijida Prano

Life Drain

Every day, every moment that trickled down

From the faucet of her life

She died, drop by drop.

Reflected in the pristine azure of each droplet of time

Were the visions of her heart.

Before her eyes a new droplet was being born

Out of life’s silver source.

She shrunk from this one, not knowing, not understanding

Why.

Obscurity.

Disappeared, meshed, melted in the sink

Indistinguishable one from another,

Those visions had been comfortable.

Uncertainty.

She trembled- was it anticipation? fear?

Dawning in her world of water bubbles

Was a vicious enemy.

Groaning, shuddering, utterly powerless, she watched

As the droplet began to take form.

Straining to seek life in its fathomless depths,

She approached the unknown darkness,

Like a soul going forth to its damnation.

She crossed with increasing terror

On memory’s perilously swaying bridge.

Behind her pursued Time, closing in unmercifully until

There was no turning back.

Now the droplet flooded her senses- there was nothing else.

Pulsing, swimming among her tears of glass

The droplet was a web.

Threads of legendary aqua, woven into a delicate nightmare.

Panic surged through her.

Where was it- the substance that had held everything together?

It had been there- in the sink of the past.

It was not here.

She fought but the web imprisoned her in its frigid embrace

Swallowing her.

Screams without sound.

The droplet web, sealed with her tears,

Grew too heavy for the faucet to bear.

Falling, falling…

Nothing would ever be the same

While the substance that she had never imagined herself without

Was gone.

It had been her sustenance, her life’s blood, her love,

What had made life beautiful.

The gaping wound of her loss never healing,

She would always need, her heart would always limp.

When she could once again comprehend in this cruel womb,

The gleaming silver eye would shed this tear-

It would fall in the sink of her memories

Another drop.

She felt cold as she died

A little more.