He doesn’t stagger to catch his breath. He’s too old for that and can fake not being dizzy like a ballerina in her tenth spin. But fact from front must be considered when understanding such an intelligent, well-dressed, and sizable creature such as Henry Jacob whose grandfather died by a shot in the leg and whose great grandfather laid his head on a stick of dynamite. The mere feat of dying with dignity and not by some accident or some jelly fished way out is of first priority and with these types of decisions like falling end over top for someone so young, so beautiful, so good in bed, with a lovely brain, and 23 laughs is beyond foolish. And I would have you know that he even says her name from time to time in whisper to himself like a crazy man with padded walls talking to the lady in the wallpaper. And sometimes late at night you can hear him behind his cheap aluminum siding poorly strumming away three notes on strings stretched over wood singing about her and how her smile seeps through his pores and then into his cells making them heavy and full. And truth be told she was the most lovely of the birds that seemed to bring out something more in him. His laughs were far wittier, his writings became more intelligible, and even those metal rattling against that hollowed out maple have started to sound real proper. But when he thinks of it all his father mixing the sand, the fly ash, and the water day in and day out, his mother wasting away on the couch, and all the years he has lost he stops to feel the rhythm smacking somewhere behind the skin, the thin muscle, and the breast bone just dying to ask him why not? Why not let her into your those four walls, the time between immediately and without end, and the plum colored appendage that is already engorged with the scent left of her on his pillow, the gentle smile she has in the darkness, the longing for her voice dancing against that drum in his ear.

It changed instantly. One minute I was unbound, boundless, and then in a mere second it was as if she was imprinted on me and in me. It was as if her own blood had covered my structure, my bones, and from there on out wherever I went she now did as well. When I felt the wind it was her at a whisper. When I stepped forward she was the ground.