He came around the corner and was stopped by the sudden realization that he was unique. He would run no more. He fingered the hole in his shirt. It went through shirt, through his skin. Into flesh. The wet sap of his hot blood mingled with the chill of perspiration against his ribs.
One second, he thought.  One second is the amount of time between being alive and being dead. He had been on one side of that tick, and now he was on the other.
One inch. He marveled between heaves at the perfect circularity of the hole in his chest.  One inch, the length of a bullet: the distance between yesterday and tomorrow.
He watched the smoke billow from the razed building beside him. Someone was calling his name from far away. The faces obscured the clouds. He wanted to look at the sky.  It turned black.
This is crisp and fast; love the action going on despite the fact that he has stopped running at the beginning of the story. It’s slow mo with fast thinking. Really nice images here.
Comment by susan — July 7, 2009 @ 3:41 pm |
I wanted to take only one second and explore it. It seemed that the time between the action was Steve’s focus. Plus my entries are getting long again
Comment by cymem — July 8, 2009 @ 8:30 am |
I like him!
Comment by onehundredpoems — July 8, 2009 @ 2:09 pm |
He reminds me of me. Either he does or you do.
Comment by onehundredpoems — July 8, 2009 @ 2:10 pm |
I must have clipped him too short, because he’s still with me. There’s a lot of backstory beginning to build, but I’m a lazy writer. To tell him correctly would require research and–ick–reading the news. He’s hung out for now, too much around to read already.
Comment by cymem — July 8, 2009 @ 2:12 pm |
[...] by anyone but me. Alethea means, “truth”; Kumani means, “devotion”; Jamal, “likely to die soon after birth”. Can’t understand why anyone knowing this [...]
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