TRACE

The water here is crystal blue. Why I chose it. Something about being borne to a better place, the washing away of sins. You think I am inanimate. Yes. You, there, watching me from above, on the rotting wooden bridge. We both couldn’t settle. I know. A shared need to separate from what’s gone before, a stripping back, a wiping away. We are here to face one another again, in the full force of a demand to expunge. I sense the heaviness in your gaze as it tries to focus, blurs, then refocuses for an instant so intense this image, of me, of you, becomes suspended through all of time. My awkward, unreal, and not quite jelly fish form has you hypnotized, is the casting of an unwelcome spell. If you could read my thoughts, you’d learn of the revulsion at what has been my recent burden. This spring fed brook has made invisible all evidence of my last and final purpose. Only if you looked under a microscope, would you be curdled by the trace of what remains… But you, yes, YOU, there, are still searching for an explanation to this floaty, disconnected state you currently inhabit, and why it seems so impossible to shake. Your hand grips tight into the railing, thrusting splinters deep, and induces stigmata. Yet you feel no pain. There is no freeze burning of your bare feet in the snow which blankets them. I reflect light from a low-slung winter sun, but carry no warmth for you. Your eyes fix on me again, and I take us on a little further. But you have not understood. You still think me inanimate, like a wall that absorbs from its surroundings yet must remain forever mute. You don’t appreciate the strong connection that links us - indelibly: Our bond.
I too felt the cold thud that surprised you, that felled you, when your body was still pumped with life. Your unworldly screams rucked the molecules of my synthetic structure. Until very recently, I cradled tight- wrapped bits of you – of torn skin, of smashed bone, of chopped flesh - through all the long hours of one dark night.
Executed from behind with a blunt instrument is what the police report will say; then finished off with a kitchen knife.