Because the question had long been forgotten, he strode along the edge not seeing anything other than the sky overhead. Pink and blue blotches in the evening grey, and the sound of crunching cereal in the distance: aside from the sights and sounds, little else penetrated for days and years; and, endless years of prayer for the faintest memory to come brutally pronounced like a salty or tangy bit defining an instant in a bite, or a banquet. Each loosening step before him drowned away his heartbeat and his breathing in the bluing din. He was alone and many days walk from anything, but he could not free his eyes from the sky. He continued to walk.
The sky continued dimming. Through a rending in the clouds he saw the first star since he began walking. He could still only hear the distant crunching which seemed to get much closer with every step. Now, he could feel a cool breeze and smell something decaying, but it was not as startling as the second star his eye caught. The star appeared to cling to the edge of a torn sky, and as the tear widened and rotated it seemed to carry the star in a circle along its rim.
All the while he continued to walk and his footing became less sure, yet he could not keep his vision from the feast of the sky. The ground, although firm, became increasingly loose; at times, his feet landed later than the times before, yet he continued onward, inexorably drawn by the sky reshaping itself endlessly. He remembered something about... but as soon as did, he lost its thread… it didn't matter. His feet continued to rise and fall, his legs kept scissoring his course forward, and what he felt, heard and smelled intensified; the cottony quilt of the sky slowly became ragged, revealing time jewels-- each joining its own song to-- humming in the sky, languidly filling the darkness.
As he continued, an occasional step came further outside the rhythm of the previous paces; but, the sky filled him, except for the nagging surroundings burrowing through his other senses. Of a sudden, past torn and dissipating clouds, the shine of countless stars burst forth, a chorus nearly uninterrupted calling the memory to re-ignite-- soon the verse draws nearer the chorus-- to fend off the on-setting cold and, that stench. By now his legs seemed to have their own will, tugging his body inescapably onward, reeled from beyond the lens of the sky; then, past the wispy shreds of clouds emerged an upright crescent moon, tears streamed chill down his cheeks, and the first crashing whisper of countless more reached his ears with a salty impression.
Each muzzled roar came in a murmuring rhythm like the wind: subsumed power waiting to be uncorked, pounding the shore implacably. As his left foot landed at mid-thigh depth he bit his lower lip and scraped his right hamstring-- a hiccup in his delirious stride. He licked at the stinging edges of the coppery salt rip in his mouth, and… he began to remember-- No! not yet-- but the memories didn’t belong here with him, they belonged to… he heard, between laps of the land by the sea, the unceasing crunch in sync with his pace, unperturbed by the arrhythmic meter, driving him onward with his gaze anchored to the heavens.
Beneath all of this he heard a familiar susurration: his own breath! He stepped with his right his foot, and as it hung in the air in poured all his memories: clothes hanger in the urethra, casts, anger, beatings, joy, thrills, terror, humiliations, denials, victories, warmth, failures, surrender, love, deceit, betrayal, forgiveness, betrayal, forgiveness, defeat; along with every song he had sung or heard or wished he would someday sing, every shoe he had worn, every egg he had flipped, every fire he had warmed by, every time, place and occasion; and, he remembered every face and gesture and reaction of every one he had met, the more so of every one he had known. Every memory snaked its own path through the tangle of memories branching again and again, yet each arriving unerringly at a singular point. Was it a dream? The only one worth having… His foot hung in the air, and his eyes blinked.
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