...if you are awake.


Exchanging hands, passing secrets. He let them slip through his grasp the way water will fall between stones, rivers, a roof of wet. He watched them swirl and twirl down a drain called life, an experience you can't take back.

There's no right way to rewind this tape, to get back the days you've left behind. And even if it is a living legacy, it never looks good in reverse.

So he let the minutes tick by on an unforgiving clock, admiring the cuts they made in the fabric of time, a mantle he was slowly collecting across his broad shoulders. It was amazing to see it all.

It was amazing to live it, love it, let it pass him by like a whore on the corner.

One he never paid for.

At the end of it all, the days gone by, he'd fold that cloth up, a neat bundle kept in a closet, a child's old toys no longer played with. He'd never take them down, look them over. This wasn't a book full of pictures, a photogenic album of yesterday for him.

His indifference meant that he put it all away with finality, with a deliberate feeling of 'doneness'.

Every time he shut the closet door, locking away the nightmares and dreamscapes, the beasts that hide between the cracks of a child's wardrobe?

It sounded like a mausoleum, slamming shut.