Ash and Mirrors

 

One more step.

I take one more step, leaving another footprint on the ash that covers the ground. Everywhere that I look I see only mirrors, some big, others very, very small. Some are unbroken while others lay in pieces shattered a long time ago. 

Only I walk among the ash and mirrors, and each mirror reflects my image an infinite number of times, the image bouncing from one mirror into the next. An infinity of me. My own personal hell.

A gust of wind raises some of the ash to my face, and in another life, I would have cried, like any other person would have cried, but my tears have gone dry a long time ago.  

As the ash rises, I can hear the sound she keeps from me. Laugh, joy, screams. The sound of my people. They are gone, but the ash that remains remembers the sounds and when the wind allows, those sounds come back for a very precious split second. 

I take another step. Each second I feel heavier and heavier, the height of silence and loneliness falling upon me. Each time that I move forward it takes all the strength I can muster and each time I feel my body breaking down a little bit more than on the previous time.

Then my body snaps and I fall, knees and hands on the ash and again, I try to cry. But no tear comes and no one would be there to listen anyway.

I try to rest, as all the times before when this happened. I don't know how much time passes while I'm in the penitent's position, just waiting. And again the wait ends with a sliver of strength returning to my old, broken body.

I rise, and take another step