Eternity
E.E. King, on the death of a friend
She trained herself to study him. Trained herself to remember every detail of his face, the curve of his eyelids, the way his cheeks fell toward his lips and swelled out toward his chin. She imagined herself pressing against him, pushing against his lips as he dissolved into her. The cancer was shrinking, but never diminishing him.
She thrust against him, trying to make every cell melt into her, so that she would always have him with her, even when he was gone. He would remain inside, more tangible than memory, a part of her.
Dying, it’s a lot like living but the reverse. Inside a mother a skeleton grows sinew, bones, muscles, flesh and skin. The cancer had eaten them. Devoured the sinew, bones, muscles flesh until he was just skin and bone.
When he had gone, she knew she had succeeded. His sweat oozed from her pores. His tears ran from her eyes. When she ate something spicy, it tasted bland, but his tongue burned.
At night she fell into his dreams. She knew they were his because she was swimming as he used to in the ocean, waves pouring over his muscles, fish flitting beneath his fingers and darting in between his toes. Silvery minnows so small they too could’ve been a part of him.
He had been a sculptor. Carving flesh from stone. Seeing how light touched marble turning it rose colored as if it were alive.
She had a few of his small pieces. Even though they were abstract, when she touched them, she could feel them squirming slightly, breathing against her fingers. They were round, perfect spheres of marble, yet beneath her hands they felt like huge globular fish.
For days afterwards, her hands smelled like seaweed and tasted of salt. Whenever she washed her hands, scales like silver half pennies, dripped from her fingers, glistening in the sink, staining the porcelain with memory.
In this way he became part of her. Never really dying but interred in her bones.
When she died would they both go on together? Part of the eternity? Dissolving into the nothingness that was everything.