Keep Art Alive :: “Tails” :: Art by Kelly Haigh

“And I was thinking’ bout how everyone is dying,
and maybe it’s time to live.”

The ground was dry, cracking, the dust blowing up to gather in my hair. It had grown out some from the last time we found ourselves here, parked on the side of the road, wandering out into the great big nothing to scream up at the stars. There are factories in the distance, farther still the lights that turn the sky to a mid-day glow even in the dead of night. Fear is like a knife in my hand, stolen from the house of expectation, blood stained and cold to my bones.

“No one can find us here. No one even knows we’ve gone.” You assure me, your voice deep and rich like black coffee, familiar, the sound that always cuts through the clutter in my mind.

“Everyone is dying. Everyone dies. Even these stars above, all around us, they are all dead. I’ll be dead someday, to.” I try to breathe through the tears, I try to take the screaming down to a low moan, I try to tell him that I just can’t.

“Maybe it’s time to live.” You whisper, stealing lyrics from a song, half-singing it to me as you grab my hand.

I taste salt from the crying, and the grit of sand on my tongue, my throat drier than the air whipping around us, but then its just you, the taste of you, making promises with your lips on mine that neither of us can keep. But we make them, kicking our shoes off and grabbing hands as we run into the unknown, living, at least for tonight.

P.S. You Rock My World :: Eels