of the breach

a spire; a chasm

One future is slowly reticulating. It’s a ghostly sketch with a road for me, a road lined with family, friends, and peddlers.

Due South there’s a great spire stitched with countless switchbacks that she and he climb together, at all different times and in the same time. As a fragile infant, he is cradled by her. As a toddler, he’s on her back. A few rungs higher, he’s walking and playing with rocks and sticks and his mother’s shoes and she walks more slowly than before and now. They are stronger and older. They are weaker and closer. They are always tender. Until the rungs are dimensionless and the fog is too dense despite its name, they are all there.

In between us is a muted and featureless chasm and as much as I stare across, and with great intent, they never, never, look my way.