The Meadow 51 Under pressure you will convert. Orders are barked. Katherine speaks softly or maybe she yells. My sorority sister looks worse for the wear. Every sound is muffled, like dirt is packed into my ears. My limbs convulse. I open and close my hands, reaching for someone to take them, but the only person to touch me is Peter. Fuck you, I think. Blinking, I say, Get the fuck out of here. He is so close I can see the patterns within the perfect circle that cradles his pupils, an expansion of jagged EKG lines. And the colour? Cadet blue, of course. Longing to be intimate on a whole other level, Peter hovers until his face is the only one I see. I blink until the dark clouds at the edge of my vision swell, which is when the doctor pushes Katherine aside. Peter places his hand on the crown of my head and the someone mumbles while fumbling with the ties on my gown. “Here we go,” the doctor says. There is a flash. Incandescence. Everything collapses inwards until I become so dense, I think I might implode. Katherine hands another syringe to the doctor with a new set of benched marks on her pretty face. It is then I surrender to all the gods I don’t believe in and turn myself over to something arcane and unseen. I surrender because all lives end by way of compression. I pray though I have little faith in much of anything. 20:49 | 76/50 mmHg | ♥ 153 bpm | 38.4 °C | SpO2 81% Elemental worship. Cosmic substance. Wind. My father once told me air is the most powerful substance because it is a shapeshifter. A rogue in disguise. Air takes on countless forms. Hot or cold, dry or wet, sweet or mineral, the immaculate child of ether is a stratospheric vagrant in that it caresses, smothers, and fuels. Wind drags, expels, bites. Divinity manifest, air is the only periodic particle to fill us up. And, as I learn, not enough takes us out.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODQ3NA==