Content warning: stillbirth, war

She doesn’t know that I’m gone yet.

I’ve never seen her before, not as anything but filmy shadows undulating behind creamy pink light, but I would know her anywhere.

She’s beautiful; I knew she would be. I could hear it in her voice; the way it crackled with emotion as she sang the words of Taps to soothe the practice pains that washed over us both in surges, a dance we both moved to in time, just she and I, moving between worlds, moving toward each other in the ether. Moving toward one another, until we weren’t.

I recognize her hands, like a memory: all long, graceful fingers, fingertips that would flutter down the edge of the veil between us, then rake back up with the heels of her palms, massaging me, probing me, prodding me.

She looks serene, almost blissful. Her hair is swept back into a matted bundle on her head and she sways, humming low, tilting her chin up, her lips parted ever so slightly, her neck arching; I see her pulse thrumming in her throat. A glistening sheen of sweat blankets her skin, but she is shaking, her teeth clacking, jaw rattling with cold. She is full up of war, waging battles in waves.

The sparkling ephemeral filaments that tie us together are fraught and fraying, but I will them to hold just a while longer, just a few more moments here, with you, in this in-between place, this liminal space, where we still belong to each other. 

I have never met her, not really, but I know her, I feel her. If I am still I hear her heartbeat thundering all around me, the drumbeat of my very existence.

“It’s you and me. We can do this,” she whispers desperately, palms pressed to her swollen stomach. She does not know that it is only her now, that she will have to face this last part alone. We’re two sojourners on the road to infinity, parting company at a fork in the road.

Does stardust have memory? Will your soul recognize mine when the roads converge again? Will you come looking for me?

She screams, a primal, ferocious howl, and the tether snaps. 

I am borne away from the shore, out into the darkness. Splash.

A raw, gray, wrinkled thing, an empty vestibule, a thread wound too tight round a bobbin.

She is fading from my vision even now, but her scream could shatter the heavens.. 

–

She doesn’t know that I’m gone yet.

It’s been two days that we’ve laid here together, arms and legs pinned beneath rebar and cinder block and so much dust. The ramparts didn’t hold, couldn’t have; instead, they crumbled around us and on us and even as we’ve lain here, still the shrieking missiles streak by and distant flashes of impact ricochet off the rubble of the bulwark. Bursts of gunfire, the errant scream. Oblivion is better than this.

She is singing Taps, like she did when I was a small boy, afraid of the dark and the terrors that might lurk there. The words reverberate through me, and even now, even now, I feel the warm hum of comfort, as if I have just fallen asleep in her arms in the dim light of the nursery.

Day is done, gone the sun..

If I try, I can recall the sensation of her blood pooling around me, mingling with mine like a warm blanket, the biting metallic scent of her devotion. I can almost feel the weight of her shivering body on top of mine- so light, too slight to bear this. Like a fading photograph, I can just barely recall the feeling of her hands clutched around my chest, her back shielding us both from flying shrapnel, the sharp edges of latticed plaster mesh digging deeper into our sides with every dry, ragged breath. When at last I stopped, it felt for a moment like a relief. 

Don’t worry, my love, she whispered, her voice tremorous and gravelly, dust coating her parched throat. They’ll come for us. Don’t be afraid. Only a while longer, you’ll see. 

I wished she’d stop talking; I was afraid the wrong sort of people may hear her, may come for us.

It hurts, mama, I whispered back.

What hurts?

Everything.

It was not long after that the crescendo began, the culmination; the pain built and burst and then, like a shooting star, was gone.

From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky..

Last week in the garden, we waged righteous war on the slugs that had been decimating her crop of prized sweet bell peppers. Our weapons were coffee grounds and eggshells and sand, and with bare hands we plucked them from every tender leaf and budding fruit, and the dirt smelled sweet and rich beneath my hands. For good measure, she said, and she winked as she tossed me the salt, like a grand finale at a fireworks show.

Death, it turns out, comes for us all like a slug lays dying in its own mucin: a sizzling dissipation, death by a thousand fiery, stinging needles, fizzing lymph and boiling blood until your entire being is lost to a million nerve endings screaming out in unison, until you dissolve completely into the great and endless pain.

How is it that just last week we were in the garden together? 

All is calm, safely rest..

In the distance, voices. The clatter of rocks and debris shifting under heavy boots. The yellow circle of light from a headlamp sweeps past.

“Here!” She cries, relief surging through her words like a droplet of blood dispersing into water. ”We’re over here!” She begins to weep, finally, burying her face into the nape of my neck, my hair caked into a thick crust of blood and dirt. She doesn’t notice it is cold, not yet.

“They’re here, baby.” Heaving, guttural sobs cascade from her lips. “We’re saved. Oh, son! It’s all going to be okay.”

God is nigh.