A Whimper

A Story by Waldoizhere

Prose fiction, an essay for high school to be submitted later in the year. I appreciate any and all feedback, and before you ask, no I was not under the influence of drugs when i wrote this :).

A Whimper
Cold breath cascades into cold air as cold clothes stick to cold bodies. My knees buckle under the strain of carrying those who can no longer carry on, yet I insist on carrying myself with poise and grace. I am always charming, shooting a smile to the old lady sewing on her porch while resenting the mile yet to be trudged in these wet, weary boots. I carry the heavy, heady past, and carry on towards the distant, lustreless future.

I carry scars, badges of honor, reminders of old friends and better days. Days when I could laugh without wondering who was watching, when watching people was reason enough to laugh. When awkwardness and self consciousness were esoteric concepts to me. When I was a child forever lost in lethargy and languidity. Giggles flowed like dandelion wine, and even if I didn’t have wings, I was soon to be airborne. I was the apprentice of my own imagination, the hero of my own fantasy, a bird in my own perpetual flight of fancy. The obligation to my caretakers was balanced with the obligation to my childish carelessness. I had to mess up in a way nobody would notice, and to leave only a toothpaste smile and puppy dog eyes when they did. My past was lost in a purple haze, yet I am quick to remember my glory days.

I carry memories and stories. Of the times I stayed up long enough to see a dove with wings of every color. Of the times I saw a blue car with an endless stream of horses trailing behind. Of the times when I fell into pages and landed on the backs of dragons and in the talons of eagles. Of the times I accompanied the strange and obsessed man in his garish yellow car to see his famed green light. Of times when I didn’t enter stories carrying blunt surgical dissection tools, and I didn’t leave them carrying armfuls of similes and metaphors, syllogisms and metaphysics.

I carry a piece of everyone met, every place been. The yellow hat of the tall man who always wore yellow clothes and who was always accompanied by his pet monkey. A piece of chewing gum from the kind lady at the corner store who gave children candy on Sundays. The coat of the old man who fed pigeons in the park and the striped shirt of the young boy who sat beside him. I carry a piece of shoal from the shores of a misty sea, a feathery mantle made with fleece from the ninth cloud, black obsidian from the fires of mount doom.

I carry codes of the umpteenth difficulty. Emotions of untold crypticity and ineffable complexity. Thoughts of wars not fought, lost loves never lived, songs never sung, writing never written. My mind remains an enigmatic monolith, a grey box filled to the brim with ever changing labyrinths without exits. I carry with me pages and pages of escapes, churning seas of words yet to be plunged into, countless worlds yet to be explored, beautiful people yet to be loved within the layers of a beautiful story.

I carry a scalpel and I carry bandaids. Tiny incisions into memories of the past to forget what needs forgetting, to graft what needs grafting, to transfuse what needs transfusing. When the tool goes too deep, the bandage will quietly arrange for the omission of where I have crossed the line. When the cut becomes a laceration, what can be salvaged is salvaged, and what cannot be recycled is discarded as refuse of my consciousness. I refuse to carry my embarrassment, and my soul refuses to carry its spark.

I carry the shame of being a thief. My velvet tentacles probe the corners of other minds, stealing fragments of their being to fill the hollow recesses of mine. My identity is lost in the swirling vortex of what is and what was. My life is lost in bridging the chasm of what is and what could be. My mind is lost among the memories of what was and what has become.

I carry bodies, people with names and faces now devoid of life and meaning, but I never carry proof of having lived: no passport, no license, no checkbook, no name.
I will carry and carry until I can no longer carry, and when a cold whimper pierces the cold, cold air, I carry no more.